Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Upcoming Event

Best Places to Work in Virginia

Hamburger Menu Hamburger Menu

byline: Paula C. Squires

Four parcels at Quantico Corporate Center in Stafford will be offered at auction

 

Four campus parcels at the Quantico Corporate Center in Stafford will be offered for sale at an auction conducted by Nicholls Auction Marketing Group on Friday, April 20.


The center is located off Interstate 95 and U.S. Highway 1, next to the U.S. Marine Corps Base in Quantico. Home to such companies as BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Marine Corps Systems Command and SAIC, the campus is about 45 minutes or less from major federal agencies throughout the Washington, D.C., area.


“The strategic location, combined with the advanced security network and technology support, makes the QCC a prime location for defense contractors, software companies, government agencies, data centers, research facilities and other types of tenants that require advanced secure data support and access to our nation's capital,” Kelly Strauss, who is managing the auction for Nicholls, said in a statement. 


Parcels are 1.6 acres, 5.8 acres, 5.6 acres and 27.6 acres. Each parcel will be offered individually, followed by bids on any combination of parcels, including the entirety. They will sell in the combination that brings the highest price.


The auction will begin at 11 a.m.  at the Courtyard by Marriott Stafford Quantico, 375 Corporate Drive in Stafford. Bidders who can't attend in person may bid online by prior arrangement.
Nicholls Auction Marketing Group Inc., based in Fredericksburg, is a professional accelerated marketing firm specializing in the promotion and sale of real estate via the auction method of marketing.

MCO Transport renews 78,569-square-foot lease in Chesapeake

MCO Transport Inc. has renewed its lease of 78,569 square feet in Bay Warehouses at 1400 Cavalier Blvd. in Chesapeake. Geoff Poston of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer handled the lease negotiations.

In other transactions for Thalhimer in Hampton Roads: 

The city of Newport News renewed a 19,896-square-foot lease in Maritime Square at 2600 Washington Ave. in Newport News.  Teresa Nettles handled the lease negotiations.

Seniorcorps Property Holdings LLC purchased a 20,956-square-foot, three-story office building at 4524 Wishart Road in Virginia Beach from the ABNB Federal Credit Union for $1.5 million as an investment. Eric Stanley along with Troy Parker of Parker Burnell Real Estate Group handled the sale negotiations on behalf of the seller.

Long & Foster’s Fairfax and Annandale offices move to new location


The Fairfax and Annandale offices of Long & Foster Real Estate have merged and relocated to a new facility. Now located at 3060 Williams Drive in Fairfax, the 7,916- square-foot office is near the town center known as the Mosaic District, an area with a mix of retail shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues.

The Fairfax Mosaic office offers space for collaboration and business development. Home to more than 100 realtors, the office has prominent signage, which can be viewed from Route 50.

Contemporary desks are available for anyone to use in the open area. A café-style workspace features high-top tables and stools, booth seating and a space with sofas. Several private offices also are available for the company’s realtors and teams. In addition, Long & Foster’s partners, RGS Title, Prosperity Home Mortgage, Long & Foster Insurance and Long & Foster Property Management have offices at the new location.

A complimentary shuttle is available to transport agents and clients to the Mosaic District and the Dunn Loring-Merrifield Metro station. Other amenities include free parking, an outdoor patio area with picnic tables, as well as on-site café and fitness center.

“ “Fairfax has a thriving real estate market, and we’re in a prime position to grow our team and even better support the homebuyers, sellers and investors in our local market,” Gary Cuff, manager of the Fairfax Mosaic office, said in a statement.

The Breeden Co. announces two promotions

The Breeden Co. in Virginia Beach has promoted two of its staffers.

 

Dana E. Wilson was named vice president of public relations and corporate communication. Previously, she served as the public relations and corporate communications manager.  In her new role, Wilson will continue to oversee all public relations, communications and The Breeden Co.’s brand. 

 

Wilson joined the Virginia Beach-based firm in 2004 to provide administrative support as the receptionist. She was promoted six months later to executive assistant to company CEO Ramon W. Breeden Jr., a position where she worked with Breeden and several other of the company’s top executives.  She assumed the responsibility of public relations and corporate communications manager for the organization in March 2017.

 

Travis Powroznik moves up from project executive for Breeden Construction LLC to the division’s vice president. In his new position, he will be responsible for day-to-day operations, managing personnel and overseeing construction costs and project schedules for in-house developments and third party projects. Powroznik has more than 18 years of experience in the construction industry, with a concentration in multi-family housing, light commercial and tenant improvements. 

Brookfield Property Partners buys office properties in Reston for $95 million

 

JBG Smith announced the sale Wednesday of a two-building office project in Reston to Brookfield Property Partners for $95 million. 

The Summit I and II buildings are 100 percent occupied and situated on Dulles Toll Road. According to JBG, based in Chevy Chase, Md., the project consists of more than 290,000 rentable square feet and about 700,000 square feet of additional density.

In the first quarter of this year, JBG Smith closed on the sale of land and temporary construction easements associated with the Summit site to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority for $2.2 million.

Matt Kelly, CEO of JBG Smith, said in a statement: “The sale of Summit I and II is consistent with our strategy to take advantage of market conditions to recycle capital, deleverage our balance sheet and reinvest the proceeds in higher-yielding growth opportunities. This transaction demonstrates continued investor interest in high-quality assets, and we were pleased to work with Brookfield Property Partners through this process.”

Brookfield is a global company that owns, operates and invests in commercial property.

Tom Cleaver, Dan Grimes and Rob Faktorow of CBRE represented JBG Smith and Brookfield Property Partners in the sale of Summit.

Commonwealth Commercial Partners develops new subsidiary

Commonwealth Commercial Partners (CCP) in Henrico County has expanded its Rural Land Team by creating a subsidiary designed to meet the needs of rural land buyers and sellers.

The company has hired five new staff members to help run the subsidiary, Commonwealth Land. “This is a different business than commercial real estate, and it deserves its own marketing team, management team, research team,” Mark Claud, CEO of CCP said in an interview with Virginia Business.” It’s infinitely scalable, and we are excited to take our platform to other markets.”

The new hires in the company’s Richmond office and other locations are in the areas of marketing, data base management and transactional sales.
They  will focus on enhancing what has long been a business line of the company. Commonwealth Commercial has a history of working with clients to manage rural land sales, particularly in the range of 100 to 4,000 acres. “That’s our sweet spot,” Claud says. 


He added that the company has made “a significant investment” in marketing and technology for Commonwealth Land that will help leverage a proprietary database that matches buyers and sellers and provides comparable data to inform each deal.

Commonwealth Land will complement Broadleaf Forestry, an in-house forestry consulting subsidiary led by Brian Reinhart. According to Claud, Reinhart runs a Virginia, North Carolina enterprise that works with families of high net worth owning tracts of 1,000 acres or more, with much of the land in timber tracts.

Claud expects that Commonwealth Land’s clients will continue to be families and high-net worth individuals who own large tracts and who need help in managing their land, adding to their portfolio or offering land for sale. “With generational changes, people may be looking for a long-term strategy or new ownership may not always want the property,” he says.


CCP has not named a head of its new subsidiary, although “we are furiously working on it,” says Claud.
The new Commonwealth Land website was launched this month. Consumers in the Richmond and Hampton Roads markets will begin seeing the new name and brand identity by mid April.

“We’re operating in a very distinct niche,” Bill Barnett, senior vice president and partner at Commonwealth Land, said in a statement.  “This change better communicates those offerings and positions our team to connect the right buyers with the right sellers — and that’s why people come to us.”

In addition to its locations in Virginia, CCP has offices in Nashville, Tenn.; Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.; Greensboro, Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham, N.C.; Greensville, S.C.; Reading, Pa. and Houston.

WPC breaks ground on 67,000-square-foot medical office building in Dulles


Washington Property Co. (WPC) has started work on a 67,000-square-foot medical office building in Dulles.

The building is across Route 50 from the recently opened HCA StoneSprings Medical Center on property originally targeted for residential construction.

Two medical-care providers and a pharmacy have signed leases at what will be called the Stone Ridge Medical Center, which is scheduled to open by the end of the year.

The tenants are: Virginia Pediatric Group (4,500 square feet), Jackson Clinics (3,000 square feet ) and Royal Care Pharmacy (1,500 square feet).

Bethesda, Md.-based WPC acquired the 8.4-acre site in 2016 from Van Metre Homes. According to the Bethesda-based company, the project’s overall development cost, including land acquisition, is about $21 million.

The hospital and the new medical building are designed to serve the growing population of Loudoun County, the second-fastest growing county in the U.S., according to Forbes magazine.

The 234,000-square-foot HCA StoneSprings Medical Center opened in 2015, becoming Loudoun’s first new hospital in 100 years. It offers 124 private beds, emergency care, and advanced heart and vascular care.

CarLotz leases space for a corporate headquarters at City View Landing in Richmond

CarLotz has leased 5,500 square feet in City View Landing in Richmond’s Manchester area.

According to Thalhimer Realty Partners Inc. (TRP), the investment and development subsidiary of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer, CarLotz joins other tenants in the office portion of the building at 611 Bainbridge St. near the James River.

They include Authentic, a digital-technology company occupying 11,500 square feet, and COLAB, a web-development company occupying 4,500 square feet. 

“CarLotz is thrilled to bring its corporate office to City View Landing,” Will Boland, one of the company’s co-founders, said in a statement. “… With its mix of open community spaces and private offices, access to a clubhouse, fitness center, and pool, and proximity to nearby restaurants in Manchester along with the paths and trails alongside the James River, the office is a perfect fit for our growing team.” 

Drew Wiltshire, managing principal of Thalhimer Realty Partners, said, “We welcome the opportunity to partner with a growing company with a dynamic employee base.  They will fit in nicely with our other tenants and complement the culture that continues to grow at City View Landing and overall in Manchester.” Mac Wilson and Jeff Cooke with Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer are the leasing agents for the project.

Stihl Inc. breaks ground on new administration facility in Virginia Beach

Stihl Inc. continues to expand in Virginia Beach. The U.S. division of Stihl Group has broken ground on a $25 million, 80,000-square-foot administration building.

Besides the new administration space, the project will include improvements to an outdoor demonstration area for hands-on training, enhancements to the entry guardhouse and updates to traffic flow and security at the main entrance gate. 

“Stihl Inc. has enjoyed more than 40 years of growth and expansion in Virginia Beach,’’ Bjoern Fischer, president of Stihl Inc., said in a statement. “This groundbreaking is a sign of our confidence in a continued positive environment for modern manufacturing in the city of Virginia Beach and signals our ongoing investment not only to the region but our network of more than 9,000 servicing dealers and their customers.” 
 
Stihl is a leading outdoor power equipment manufacturer.  Since coming to Virginia Beach in 1974, the campus has grown from a single 20,000-square-foot rented warehouse to more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and administrative space on more than 150 acres at its site on Viking Drive.  The construction of the new administration building will inclde a Stihl museum, customer welcome center and other upgrades.

Virginia Beach-based Hourigan Construction, will serve as the general contractor for the project.  Another Hampton Roads company, HBA Architecture Interior Design, is the lead architect. Virginia Beach-based Creative Development Partners will serve as the owner’s representative.

Bjoern Fischer, president of Stihl, at the groundbreaking ceremony courtesy of Stihl Inc.

X Corp Solutions to construct corporate headquarters in Stafford County

X Corp Solutions, a defense contractor with 127 employees, is moving its headquarters to a building it’s constructing at the Quantico Corporate Center in Stafford County. 

The company said construction is scheduled to begin next month on a 30,000-square-foot, three-story facility designed as a “one-stop shop” for cybersecurity businesses, education training, certification and accreditation.

The building includes plans for an education center, training academy and cyber range. It is projected to open in the spring 2019.

X Corp Solutions is a veteran-owned business and a certified Small Business Administration program participant that specializes in program management, cybersecurity, education and training. The company provides a range of services and support to the military, Department of Homeland Security and commercial clients.

“We chose Quantico Corporate Center because we wanted to keep our corporate headquarters in Stafford, but we also needed a modern space with easy access to Northern Virginia,” company President Cesar Nader said in a statement.

The center is home to other defense and technology companies, the U.S. government and academic programs in business, forensics and cyber related degrees. Upon completion, Quantico Corporate Center will provide more than 1 million square feet of Class A office, university and supporting amenities.

“X Corp Solutions provides another prime example of the growing IT corridor in northern Stafford County and the type of company attracted to this particular region outside of Marine Corps Base Quantico,” David Newman, vice president, Silver-Honaker Development, said in a statement.

Developed by the Silver Cos. of Fredericksburg, the center is located 25 miles south of the Washington Capital Beltway along Interstate-95 and 600 yards from the South Gate of Quantico Marine Corps Base.