Loudoun Economic Development “Wins” Up 47 Percent
The Loudoun County Department of Economic Development has released its annual report for the fiscal year that began July 1, 2012 and ended June 30, 2013. The report shows that FY2013 was a banner year, with good news in all measurements tracked by the department.
Most importantly, 56 companies in industries targeted by the department moved to or expanded in Loudoun last year, investing an estimated $466.9 million and adding 1,645 jobs and 2.6 million square feet of commercial real estate to Loudoun’s economy. The number of wins is up 47 percent over FY2012.
Four of the top 10 “wins” for the year – Corporate Offices Properties Trust, Digital Realty, RagingWire and Latysis – were data centers.
“Loudoun has the hottest data center market on the East Coast, with another 844,951 square feet of building permits issued in the second half of FY13,” said the department’s Acting Director, Buddy Rizer. “There has not been one day in the last five years without data center construction in Loudoun County.”
Loudoun’s overall commercial vacancy rate decreased by 11.5 percent as more than 570,000 square feet of new commercial building space was added. As vacancy rates fell, developers were emboldened to bring speculative construction to the market. This year saw groundbreakings for two spec flex buildings in Ashburn, two spec office buildings at One Loudoun, and a spec office building in Lansdowne.
By the end of the fiscal year, there were more than 150 additional prospective companies in the pipeline, up almost 23 percent from the prior year. Forty-one percent of prospects were data centers, and 23 percent were federal government contractors.
Loudoun has been a focal point for federal government contractors, with more than two dozen of the nation’s largest defense companies already operating in the county. The number of federal contractors in Loudoun has grown 116 percent in the past decade.
“We have one of the most highly skilled, highly educated workforces in the nation, in close proximity to the nation’s capital, which is one reason why CNNMoney has ranked Loudoun #1 in job growth in the U.S. for two years in a row,” Rizer said.