Capital One Adopts Hybrid Work Model — The founder and CEO of Capital One, which employs almost 10,000 people in the D.C. area, told workers yesterday (Tuesday) that its U.S. offices, including its headquarters in Tysons, will reopen on Sept. 7. The company will shift to a hybrid model where employees can work virtually on Mondays and Fridays with no requirements for how many days they need to be in the office. [WTOP]

Traffic Calming Measures Coming to Vienna and McLean — The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted last Tuesday (June 22) to approve the installation of “$200 Additional Fine for Speeding” signs along Vaden Drive between I-66 and Lee Highway near the Vienna Metro station. The county will also spend $40,000 to install four speed humps on Churchill Road in McLean. [Sun Gazette/Inside NoVA]

Founders Row Apartments Start Preleasing — The 322-unit Modera apartment building and 72-unit Verso senior living complex in Falls Church City’s Founders Row development are now preleasing in anticipation of opening later this year. The site will also host a six-story, mixed-use building with ground-floor retail and a movie theater, and a second phase is currently in the works. [Mill Creek Residential/PR Newswire]

Falls Church Among Healthiest U.S. Communities — The City of Falls Church came in third in U.S. News & World Report’s fourth annual Healthiest Communities rankings, the same spot that it has occupied for the last two years. Fairfax County made the top 15 at No. 14. [Patch]

The Boro Tower is going to get a little more crowded in the upcoming months, even as uncertainty persists over the COVID-19 pandemic’s long-term impact on the demand for office space.

The Meridian Group and Rockefeller Group, the developers behind the Tysons office building, announced yesterday (Wednesday) that the law firm Williams Mullen and defense contractor Hanwha Defense International will both be relocating to the tower later this year.

According to a press release, Hanwha will lease 2,768 square feet on the 440,000 square-foot tower’s 18th floor starting in June as it seeks to expand its U.S. presence.

The South Korean conglomerate, which employs approximately 44,000 people across 22 countries, currently has an office in Crystal City, Arlington.

“Hanwha Defense International is excited about the opportunity to continue its growth inside the United States, in particular at Boro Tower in Northern Virginia,” Hanwha Defense Senior Executive Vice President Bernard S. Champoux said. “Our new offices in The Boro offer us the ability to further demonstrate another step in our commitment to our U.S. defense clients. We look forward to joining the already impressive tenant base inside The Boro.”

Hanwha will be joined in September by Williams Mullen, which is leasing 14,950 square feet on the Boro Tower’s 16th floor.

The full-service law firm primarily operates in the mid-Atlantic region with about 240 attorneys in offices across Virignia, D.C., North Carolina, and South Carolina. Its new offices in the Boro Tower will replace its nearby existing office in Suite 100 of 8300 Greensboro Drive.

“Williams Mullen is thrilled to be making the move to Boro Tower,” Woody Fowler, the law firm’s president and CEO, said. “It’s a terrific location and it’s move-in ready with excellent amenities.”

With the new additions, the Boro Tower will be 80% leased with 89,000 square feet of office space still available. Existing tenants include Alion Science and Technology, the accounting firm KPMG, media company TEGNA, and the law firms Hogan Lovells and Womble Bond Dickinson.

Located at 8350 Broad Street, the 20-story Boro Tower was completed in 2019 and includes lobby-level retail space in addition to office space. It is part of The Meridian Group’s 15-acre The Boro mixed-use development near the Greensboro Metro station and Tysons Galleria.

Rockefeller Group Senior Managing Director Hilary Allard Goldfarb says Hanwha and Williams Mullen will make “outstanding additions” to the Boro Tower.

“They demonstrate the kind of interest Tysons has continued to experience from prospective tenants in the DC metro market,” she said. “Companies and organizations are looking forward, especially in the DC metro, to the workplace requirements of the future. Boro Tower, with its ease of access and really exceptional on-site amenities, checks a lot of boxes for organizations in the market today.”

Photo courtesy The Meridian Group

Commercial office development will be essential to future economic recovery efforts in Tysons and Fairfax County, a new study says.

Released last Thursday (March 4) by the Tysons Partnership, an economic report and market study developed by the consulting firms HR&A Advisors, Toole Design, and Wells & Associates argues that Tysons will need at least 1.9 million square feet of new office space over the next 10 years — despite predictions that the COVID-19 pandemic could permanently alter white-collar workplaces.

“In early 2021, we remain in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, with fallout still being measured,” the economic report says. “However, office investments to date are seeing a strong performance return and will certainly play a key role in County and regional pandemic economic recovery efforts.”

According to the report, Tysons saw a 40 to 75% drop in the use of office space after COVID-19 arrived, following regional and national trends, but prior to the pandemic, vacancy rates had been declining, dipping four percentage points between 2015 and 2019.

In addition, the study projects that office-based employment in Tysons will grow by 7%, or 7,500 jobs, by 2030.

Office work is already integral to Tysons’ economy. Office workers constitute 81% of the total 107,000-person workforce, with the largest sector — the professional services industry — employing two of every five workers in the area. Tysons accounts for 17% of Fairfax County’s office-using jobs.

Tysons outpaced the rest of the county with a 9% job growth between 2015 and 2020, and that faster growth is expected to continue over the next five years, albeit at a slower rate of 5%. Professional services will still be the largest sector, but the biggest area of growth will be in healthcare, which is projected to grow by 24% through 2025.

However, the projected office-using job market growth is far short of what developers would need to fill all of the office space that is in the works for the Tysons area.

If all projects in construction and 50% of all proposed projects in Tysons are completed, that would result in 4.5 million square feet of new office space that could accommodate an estimated 18,200 workers, according to the market study.

In comparison, driven by the opening of the Metro Silver Line in 2014, Tysons added 1.9 million square feet of office space between 2015 and 2020, a 7% growth in inventory that surpassed the rate for both Fairfax County overall (4.7%) and Arlington County (4%).

Though they anticipate future job growth, the economic report and market study acknowledge that “long-term trends remain uncertain” due to the pandemic, which triggered a 5% climb in office vacancy rates and sent the leasing market plummeting from 81 deals in the first quarter of 2019 to just five in the fourth quarter of 2020 so far.

“Tysons Partnership leaders understand much work remains to be done as recovery efforts begin post COVID-19 and in identified areas where continued investment and resources are essential, including housing affordability, mobility, and implementation,” the partnership said in a news release.

Outside the office market, the report says that Tysons has cemented its role as a regional retail hub over the past decade, generating $3.5 billion in annual retail spending, which represents 17% of Fairfax County’s total retail spending.

As reported at the Tysons Partnership’s “State of Tysons” event in December, Tysons’ residential population grew 39% from 2010 to 2018, a rate four times higher than the county’s average growth. Led by mid- and high-rise developments, Tysons has expanded its housing stock by 34% to 13,800 units since 2010, and it is projected to grow by 36% to nearly 19,000 units by 2025.

“The investment on behalf of the public and private sectors in smart, sustainable urbanization is working,” Tysons Partnership president and CEO Sol Glasner said.

The full report and market study can be found on the Tysons Partnership website. The nonprofit plans to use the collected data to develop a dashboard that “will serve as the go-to information hub for a wide range of stakeholders and promote the growth of Tysons,” according to the market study.

Staff photo by Jay Westcott, slide via Tysons Partnership

(Updated on 11/12/2020) Capital One expects to unveil a 1.2-acre sky park with food trucks, a bar and beer garden, games, a dog run and an amphitheater in time for summer 2021.

Nested on top of the newly open Wegmans grocery store, The Perch is part of the second building to be completed in the 24.25-acre Capital One complex. Two more parts of the project are slated to open in the fall of 2021: the Watermark Hotel and the Capital One Hall.

From The Perch, Capital One Center Managing Director Jonathan Griffith said the public will “view Tysons from a completely different vantage point.”

For him, that perspective applies to the company’s mission to mix employees and Tysons residents.

“We are trying to separate from the notion that this is for only Capital One employees,” he said, citing The Star, a shopping and dining destination inside the Dallas Cowboys’ new training facility in Frisco, Texas, as inspiration.

The Watermark Hotel and two residential buildings will surround the Perch. The 300-room hotel will be managed by B.F. Saul Hospitality, whose flagship property is The Hay-Adams luxury hotel in Washington, D.C.

The Watermark will no longer be one of two hotels on campus, after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a request to change a planned hotel into an office building.

The Watermark Hotel is slated to open next fall, while construction on the residential towers could begin in 10 years, Griffith said.

Until the residential towers go up, semi-permanent installations will “activate the space,” including an old-school double-decker London tour bus and an Airstream converted into food trucks, Griffith said.

From the Sky Park, people can see the glassy Capital One headquarters, completed in 2018, as well as a 30-story office building with two floors of retail.

These developments fit with the trifecta of “live, work and play,” but Griffith said a fourth component, “culture,” is missing.

To fill that gap is Capital One Hall, with a 1,600-seat theater and 250-seat black box theater, as well as vaulted event spaces, large restrooms, plentiful concession areas and an expansive coat room, he said.

Capital One Hall General Manager Jamey Hines described both performance venues as “tight in feeling and room focus, but not uncomfortable.”

“People on the edges have just a good view and the audience won’t feel far away from the performer,” he said.

Having two options impacts the performer, too. “I’ve found that you have to create the room, so people achieve in the room, through seating,” Hines said.

Capital One, Fairfax County, and ARTSFAIRFAX are working together to ensure county agencies and Fairfax County Public Schools get access to 15% of the hall’s bookings at discounted rates. Already, the manager is looking to fill dates for 2022-2023.

Hines has mapped out some events and is gauging what people want to see.

The pandemic has given Capital One Hall more opportunities to be added to a multi-city tour, but he anticipates the Hall will be a bigger destination for one-time shows and productions. Hines encouraged those who are interested in dates to join the email list at capitalonehall.com.

Capital One Hall and The Perch will be open to weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, galas and functions for nonprofits, concerts and speaker series, Capital One Center marketing and community affairs manager Meghan Trossen said.

The coronavirus pandemic has sped up the building pace, now unencumbered by traffic, but the supply chain has been disrupted, impacting shipments of materials and equipment, Griffith says.

Through it all, he said Fairfax County has done “an incredible job” accommodating construction during the pandemic, implementing measures such as inspections via FaceTime to keep employees safe.

Photo courtesy Capital One

OrthoVirginia has combined its Tysons and McLean locations into one McLean-Tysons office, which is located at 1760 Old Meadow Road in McLean. 

The McLean office was previously located on Greensboro Drive across from Tysons Galleria, and the Tysons office was previously located on Old Courthouse Road in Vienna. 

The decision to make the move was to “consolidate property to go to a bigger space so we can combine all of our therapy and all of our physicians into one location,” according to an OrthoVirginia employee. 

The clinic is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Their therapies are offered Monday through Thursday from 7 a.m.-7 p.m., and Friday from 7 a.m.-5 p.m.

The previous Tysons location is still open for MRI services Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

OrthoVirgina is Virginia’s largest provider of orthopedic medicine and therapy with services including on-site therapy, surgery centers and advanced imagery, according to their website. They have more than 100 orthopedic specialists in 26 locations across Northern Virginia.

Photo via OrthoVirginia/Facebook

Capital One can now move forward with adding more office space for its employees at the Capital One Campus in Tysons.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the proposal, which swaps a planned hotel with the office building, yesterday.

Gregory Riegle, the lawyer representing Capital One, told the supervisors that replacing the previously approved, but unbuilt, hotel with office space will increase economic development near the Metro.

Riegle said that the hotel had faced challenges prior to the pandemic, which the pandemic exacerbated. Riegle did not specify what the issues were.

While the pandemic’s impact on office use is still undetermined, Riegle said that the hotel-to-office swap will support the long-term vision for the Capital One Campus. Riegle said that Capital One intends to use the new office building just for its employees as the banking giant increases its presence in Tysons.

Riegle added that the new plans will add more retail and enhance street activation.

The campus currently has two office buildings, a conference center, a parking garage and surface-level parking, according to county documents. “Construction activity is on-going on a 31-story office building, an 8-story performing arts center, and a 28-story hotel/residential building,” the documents say.

The proposal did not receive any public comment during the public hearing yesterday.

Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said that the change better fits the recommended percentage of office use in the Tysons Comprehensive Plan and that the area has other planned hotels.

As for economic development, Palchik added that the office building will support jobs for construction workers.

Palchik praised the proposal for gaining “widespread community support” in a few months, noting that the Gates of McLean and McLean Citizens Association both support the proposal.

“[It] sets a high standard for future Tysons applications,” Palchik said.

Law firm King & Spalding plans to come to Tysons, per Fairfax County officials.

The Fairfax County Economic Development Authority announced the newcomer at 1650 Tysons Blvd today.

“Firms that bring global expertise in corporate law are absolutely essential for a strong business and technology ecosystem, so we are delighted to welcome King & Spalding to Fairfax County and Northern Virginia for its 22nd worldwide location,” FCEDA President Victor Hoskins said in a press release.

Hoskins noted that this announcement adds to the growing business community in Fairfax County. Last month, Microsoft said that it will create a new technology hub in Reston.

Based in Atlanta, the corporate law firm will have a 25-person team in Tysons, according to the press release.

King & Spalding Chairman Robert Hays, Jr. said in a statement that the new office will allow the law firm to serve the tech sector in the D.C.-area.

Image via Google Maps

On Tuesday, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors green-lighted a rezoning that will open parts of the Valo Park office complex up to the public.

Tamares, Valo Park’s owner, wants to add retailers and restaurants, renovate an existing rooftop terrace and open the complex’s current amenities, including a conference center, auditorium and fitness center, to the public. Tamares is considering attracting a rooftop craft brewery atop a parking garage.

“It is anticipated that these proposed changes will help to sustain the current Class A office use and energize this part of Tysons after business hours,” Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said.

A separate comprehensive sign plan for the project was approved by the Planning Commission in May. Some McLean residents raised concerns about light pollution from the signs.

Currently, the office park (7950 Jones Branch Drive) is home to the headquarters of newspaper giant Gannett and cloud computing company Appian.

The Valo Park changes will now join upcoming changes to urbanize Tysons’ North Central neighborhood, which currently has the Park Crest and Highgate residential buildings.

Last summer, the Board of Supervisors approved the massive, mixed-use development called The Mile, which will transform 38 acres into 10 buildings with residential, retail, office, hotel and storage space, along with six parks spanning more than 10 acres.

Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust said that people can now walk to Valo Park thanks to the new Jones Branch Connector, which includes sidewalks and bike lanes.

“But for the sign issue… this is a really good application that is exactly moving Tysons in the direction that we all want to see it go — developing this kind of mixed-use, reuse,” Foust said. “This is a really important piece in the Tysons puzzle.”

Park Party Is Over — “A video supplied by a local resident showed throngs of bathing-suit-clad youths cavorting and whooping it up and swigging alcohol at the park’s scenic waterfall… Fairfax County Park Authority officials are beefing up police presence at [Scotts Run Nature Preserve], and authorities soon will be prohibiting parking along Georgetown Pike and some nearby neighborhood streets.” [Inside NoVa]

Empty Offices — “Many companies in the county are likely to shrink their footprints to account for increased remote work, according to surveys the FCEDA has tracked, while others that may have been considering a move to Fairfax have put those searches on hold, [Victor] Hoskins said. The county’s office vacancy rate stood at 13.9% at the end of 2019, according to the county’s 2021 budget plan.” [Washington Business Journal]

Vienna Hit With Power Outage — Thunderstorms last night swept across Northern Virginia. Dominion Energy has now resolved a power outage that was affecting over 1,700 customers around 8 p.m. in the Vienna area. It was caused by a circuit outage, according to Dominion. [Dominion Energy]

ICYMI: Protest Held in McLean — “Hundreds of people chanted and marched in a Black Lives Matter protest led by six McLean High School students on Wednesday.” [Tysons Reporter]

Join our Executive Director @LJCarbonneau for this Community Conversation on how the arts & cultural organizations in the Tysons area are planning in this uncertain environment. @TysonsVAPatch @mcleanvacenter @TysonsReporter @sungazettenews @DranesvilleSup @artsfairfax https://t.co/Z9re3W3thV

— McLeanProjectForArts (@MP4A) June 10, 2020

Future Offices? — “Before the pandemic shut down businesses, a robust economy had powered a building boom, sending office towers skyward in urban areas across the United States… Developers were confident that the demand would remain strong. But the pandemic darkened the picture.” [Washington Business Journal]

Protest Held in Vienna — “Hundreds showed up to protest racial injustice in Vienna Wednesday evening after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. The event on the Town Green remained peaceful, and most attendees wore face masks.” [Vienna Patch]

U.S. Senate OKs Changes to PPP — “The U.S. Senate approved sweeping changes to the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program Wednesday evening… The bipartisan bill… extends the eight-week period under which loan recipients can spend the PPP money while also addressing other details that have bedeviled small businesses in the hospitality realm.” [Washington Business Journal]

Movie Theater at Tysons Corner Center May Not Survive — “AMC Theatres said Wednesday it has ‘substantial doubt’ the company can remain in business after the coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of all of its locations… All AMC locations are closed through June, and the company said it has enough money to reopen theaters this summer. However, if not allowed to reopen, the company said, it may be unable to borrow the funds needed to continue operating.” [Patch]

How Vienna Will Use CARES Act Funding —  “Vienna officials have identified 10 spending categories for the nearly $2.9 million in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding appropriated June 1 by the Vienna Town Council.” [Inside NoVa]

Reopened Clare and Don’s Beach Shack pic.twitter.com/KUttb0A0l6

— Falls Church Views (@falls_views) June 3, 2020

During this difficult time for so many families, it’s so good to see the great work of @secondstoryorg. We’re
happy to partner with them in sharing weekly ArtReach art activities for them to share with their community. #MPAArtReach @MikeQReports @artsfairfax @TysonsReporter https://t.co/2VmfdNqL8J

— McLeanProjectForArts (@MP4A) June 4, 2020