The vast majority of speculative office space under construction in Fairfax County remains without anyone to fill it, the county reported this week.
The trend could be bad news for a county that will depend increasingly on growth outside the sputtering housing market to fill its tax coffers.
All but six of the office buildings now under construction are speculative, meaning they are being built without a dedicated purpose or tenant.
About 87.4 percent of the 5.59 million square feet of space in those 33 buildings has yet to be rented, according to Deputy County Executive Ed Long.
The figures give a fuller picture of what County Executive Anthony Griffin warned months ago could be a looming problem for Fairfax.
“I think the office builders were over-optimistic,” said Sully District Supervisor Michael Frey, whose district encompasses many of the unfilled buildings.
But experts and officials, including Frey, say the vacancies are a concern — not a crisis — and a sign of a slowdown after a major boom, which was fueled in large part by government procurement spending after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“Developers were still continuing to break ground, even in 2006, despite demands easing slightly in that time,” said Elizabeth Norton, a director of research for Alexandria-based Delta Associates. “Now we’re seeing the tail end of a lot of this product under development.”
Most of the projects are in the outlying parts of Fairfax County: Dulles, Reston and Chantilly, where land is less expensive and near a major international airport.
Dulles is seeing the worst vacancies, with no tenants lined up for 97.1 percent of its 1.75 million square feet of space, according to figures provided by the county.
“The continued influx of jobs in the county means more occupied commercial space,” said Bill Lecos, president of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. “You don’t see the kind of speculative building that was done in the ’90s; you’re not going to have that bubble.”
