When the Defense Department chose to move thousands of employees to Alexandria’s Mark Center site off Interstate 395 last year, it left the competing Victory Center building empty — and still waiting to be filled.
The two sites, with the GSA Warehouse in Springfield, were contenders to house 6,400 employees in a new Defense Department facilityas late as last September. The move was part of the federal government’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) plan, which mandated the relocation of thousands of military personnel nationwideby September 2011.
The 13-story, 600,000-square-foot Victory Center building is still hunting for tenants, although itunderwent a $60 million renovation this summer. The improvements turned the building into top-tieroffice space with the ability to meet Defense Department, Justice Department and General Services Administration security requirements — hot commodities in a region dominated by federal government buildings.
The 16-acre site is also mere blocks away from the Van Dorn Street Metro station — another key selling point for potential investors in a region infamous for its congested roadways. Planners also tout the site’s potential to house another 1 million square feet of expansion space, in addition to the building that’s there now.
But in today’s market, those pitches have thus far fallen short.
“The Victory Center project is a direct result of the Defense Department … thinking differently” about how they do their real estate, said Joseph Brennan, managing director of government investor services for the Jones Lang LaSalle Construction group.
Such a shift is little comfort to Alexandria. Its third-quarter vacancy rate hit 16 percent — the city’s highest level in more than five years, although better than much of the region.
City officials pointed out that the rate would be significantly lower were the massive Victory Center not included. The building was added back to the vacancy list during the first quarter by Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate advisory firm.
