Massive development over the last few years has caused problems in Tysons Corner.
With businesses opting to move out of older properties in favor of more desirable real estate, Tysons Corner -- the largest business district in Fairfax County, Virginia -- is experiencing a vacancy problem. The trend is leaving millions of square feet empty, in a city rich with growth. Tysons Corner currently encompasses about 27 million square feet of office space — two and a half times the leasable office space in Rosslyn -- and is already home to some of the region’s largest employers, including Gannett, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capital One, Deloitte, Freddie Mac, MicroStrategy, Northrop Grumman, and Hilton. It also has one of the largest retail concentrations in the region, with more than six million square feet of shopping space, including Tysons Corner Center, one of the largest malls in the United States.
A staggering 45 million square feet will be developed over the next few decades, yet with all the advancement, Tysons has met new hurdles: office space vacancies and traffic headaches.
We have a number of companies that have moved within Tysons Corner, and when they move from within Tysons Corner, they have moved from some of the older space to some of the newer space,” said Gerald Gordon, head of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. “It is the so-called ‘flight to quality,’ and that leaves us with a lot of older vacant space with fewer amenities, not near a Metro station and with older technology infrastructure to market at this point.”[caption id="attachment_3531" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Captial One Building in Tysons Corner[/caption] According to commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, Tysons Corner had 4.9 million square feet of vacant office space in the second quarter. That is an office vacancy rate of 21.6 percent, compared with a vacancy rate of 16.6 percent in Reston and Herndon. Commercial real estate firm CBRE said that owners of older and lower-classification buildings have two choices: either invest to improve or accept below-market rates. Traffic is the No. 1 complaint about Tysons. It will arguably get worse with massive development to come. By 2050, Tysons may have more than 200,000 people working there, and more than 100,000 people living there (projections in Fairfax County’s comprehensive Tysons Corner plan). There are currently 17,000 residents currently living in Tysons. What do you think? Do you see the issues with development in Tysons Corner? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!