KSI plans to add an office park to Harbor Station
Washington Business Journal - October 6-12, 2006
Harbor Station
CLIENT
KSI
DESCRIPTION
A 1,000-acre mixed use suburban planned community along the Potomac River in Prince William County, Virginia with 2,500 residential units, a Jack Nicklaus Golf Course, roughly 2.5 million sq. ft. of commercial and office space and a planned VRE Station.
ccl RESPONSIBILITY
Masterplanning, Engineering, Surveying, Preliminary Plans for the development, final Construction Plans for major roads and the first residential section.
OFFICE
Prince William
The mixed-use project's builder, Vienna-based KSI, is asking for a zoning amendment that would allow the creation of a 2 million-square-foot office park and also wants to add about 1,200 residential units, the bulk of them devoted to a retirement community, says Ed Byrne, the company's senior vice president of planning and community development.
Harbor Station was already zoned for 2 million square feet of office use, but the original layout scattered the space around the property.
Now KSI will consolidate the offices into an employment center on about 150 acres catering to military-related operations. The site has enough acreage to accommodate federal security requirements.
"The east side of Prince William County doesn't really have a large area set aside like this," Byrne says. "Whether it's a single federal agency or a business park of sorts for contractors, this will be right down the road from Quantico."
More than 3,000 military jobs will be shifted to the Quantico Marine Corps base as a result of decisions last year by the commission on base realignment and closure (BRAC). County officials estimate that another 3,000 private-sector workers will follow the military jobs as companies such as government contractors seek space near Quantico.
Infrastructure work has already started at Harbor Station, just off the Route 1 corridor between Woodbridge and Dumfries. The office space could deliver in about two years.
Harbor Station's office project won't be standing alone in the area.
Other large developments, including Hazel Land's Rippon Center in Woodbridge with 250,000 square feet of planned office space, are creating serious momentum in the county's office market, says Larry Fitzgerald, a senior vice president in Grubb & Ellis' Tysons Corner office.
"This is just the beginning," he says. "To the credit of companies like KSI and Hazel Land, they're trying to get ahead of the market demand that will ultimately come from BRAC. Quantico and [Fort Belvoir in southern Fairfax County] will be the big beneficiaries here."
Prince William County has one of Greater Washington's smallest markets for office space, but that should change in the next several years.
The county also has been one of the cheapest markets. Average rents at the end of the second quarter were $19.85 per square foot, the lowest among 15 submarkets in Northern Virginia, according to Alexandria-based research firm Delta Associates.
Harbor Station will be built out over the next 10 to 15 years. When finished, it will include nearly 4,000 residential units, a 250-room hotel and conference center, an 18-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus and a new Virginia Railway Express station.
KSI's zoning amendment for the office park and extra residential units could go before the county Board of Supervisors for approval Oct. 24, says Supervisor Hilda Barg, whose district includes Harbor Station.
"By the time this is complete, hundreds of people who are driving north right now for work can stay home," Barg says. "Being able to work close to home is the key to our future."