BP Purchases Land from Prince William
November 16, 2004
Buchanan Partners Purchases Land from Prince William County; Will Break Ground on 125,000 SF of Flex/Office Space
Gainesville, Virginia, November 16, 2004… Buchanan Partners has acquired 11 acres of land at Innovation@Prince William near Gainesville, Virginia for construction of the first fully speculative flex/office space within the 1,600-acre technology-oriented business park. Buchanan plans to break ground by the end of the year on three single-story flex/office buildings totaling 125,000 square feet.
Designed by Morgan Gick McBeath & Associates of Falls Church, VA and scheduled to be built by Hubert Construction LLC of Gaithersburg, MD, the three buildings will be constructed simultaneously and should begin delivering in July of 2005. Two of the buildings will have 46,300 square feet each, and the third will have 32,900 square feet. Norman Realty is leasing the buildings for Buchanan Partners. Targeted tenants include firms involved in biotechnology, information technology, and other areas of technology.
The three new structures will incorporate a number of environmentally friendly building features including skylights for natural daylighting, high R-value insulation, and the use of slag cement in base building construction. This “green” product incorporates slag, a byproduct of steel production, which is typically discarded in landfills.
“Prince William County has been very successful in attracting businesses and is now leading the nation in job growth. As a result, there is a real demand for office space,” said Board Chairman Sean T. Connaughton. “We fully support Buchanan’s plan to build three speculative office buildings and expect that they will be filled quickly.”
“We are pleased to have the opportunity to develop the first fully speculative office space within the fast-growing Innovation business park,” said Brian Benninghoff, Principal, Buchanan Partners. “Our buildings will provide space for smaller firms that want to locate near the giants of Innovation such as Eli Lilly, Lockheed Martin, American Type Culture and George Mason University’s (GMU) Center for Biotechnoloy, Bioscience, and Bioinformation. As Innovation grows, we hope to develop more sites within the park.” Eli Lilly and Co. is building a 600,000 square foot $425 million manufacturing facility at Innovation, projected to employ more than 700 people.
“Our company’s roots have always been in emerging markets,” Benninghoff continued. “One of those markets is western Prince William County, where we are developing Heritage Hunt Commercial Park, approved for up to 600,000 square feet of quality mixed-use space. We recently completed and have almost completely leased the 145,000 square foot Euclid Business Center in the City of Manassas.”
Prince William County is rapidly developing as a business, residential, and cultural hub at the western edge of the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. The U.S. Labor Department recently reported that the county as a whole had the fastest 2003-2004 job growth rate – eight percent -- of any large county in the nation; during the same time period, the U.S. as a whole experienced a job growth rate of less than one percent. Governor Mark Warner called the county a “one of the driving economic engines in Northern Virginia.”
County and GMU officials recently announced plans for a $56 million 1,100-seat performing arts center, designed in the style of a grand European opera house, to be built on the GMU Prince William campus. The western portion of the county, where Innovation@Prince William is located, is home to thousands of families living in award-winning master-planned communities such as Lake Manassas, Heritage Hunt, and others; additional residential construction is taking place throughout the County.
The 20th most active commercial developer in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, according to the Washington Business Journal, Buchanan Partners has developed a portfolio of over 2.5 million square feet of commercial property in the six years since its founding. The portfolio includes office, industrial, flex and retail space projects that have been developed, acquired, approved, or under construction. Buchanan Partners also has acquired, planned or developed over 600 acres of commercial land.
News media contact: Leslie Braunstein,
703/787-7979 - lbraunstein@schum.com