A contractor based at Reston Town Center is angling to take over an office building near Herndon whose former occupant is also now based in Reston Town Center.
Peraton, a national security and technology company started in 2017, plans to open a new campus at Woodland Pointe, a 6.77-acre office complex just south of Dulles Toll Road that previously served as Volkswagen’s North American headquarters.
To accomodate its next tenant, property owner Union Investment Real Estate hopes to supplement the six-story office building at 2200 Woodland Pointe Avenue with a second, two-story office building that would replace an existing, four-level parking garage, according to a rezoning application submitted to Fairfax County on Jan. 31.
“After a search process in which it explored potential sites in Fairfax County as well as other jurisdictions, Peraton identified the Property as the ideal location for its campus,” attorney Robert Brant wrote in a statement of justification for the application. “… The new building will include office space, computer laboratory and research facilities, and accessory storage space for equipment that will support Peraton’s research activities.”
According to Brant, the Woodland Pointe campus will enable Peraton “to consolidate multiple locations throughout Northern Virginia,” but it’s unclear whether the contractor might downsize its corporate headquarters at 1875 Explorer Street, where it currently leases 100,000 square feet.
Based on Worldgate Drive in Herndon before moving to Reston in 2022, Peraton currently occupies over 800,000 square feet of office space in Fairfax County, including space at Dulles Corner, an office park near the Innovation Center Metro station that recently changed owners.
Peraton didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time, but a company spokesperson told the Washington Business Journal that the new location is needed to accommodate workers returning to in-person work as well as “potential new program starts.”
According to the application, Peraton is expected to bring 550 to 600 workers to Woodland Pointe — a slight drop from the 600 to 700 people that Volkswagen employed there, despite the additional building.
The new building will have 89,000 square feet of office space and reach a maximum height of 85 feet, which would be consistent with the existing building, the application says. It will be supported by two levels of below-grade parking.
Union Investment proposes adding an access point at the site’s southeast corner that would align with Woodland Gap Terrace and “provide direct access” to the new building’s garage and loading bay. The only other proposed site changes are “minor reconfigurations” of the existing parking lot.
“While some additional surface parking spaces are required to accommodate the number of employees and visitors that Peraton anticipates on a regular basis, the proposed modifications will result in an overall reduction of parking spaces on site from the 635 existing spaces to the 578 spaces that are proposed,” Brant wrote.
Per the application, Woodland Pointe is the only office building that ultimately got constructed from the Woodland Park East plan approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on June 17, 2002. The rezoning allowed over 1.6 million square feet of development on 39.3 acres of land, including four office buildings, one office and retail building, and multi-family housing that became the Bryson at Woodland Park condominiums.
After that initial approval, the plan was amended in 2017 to allow mixed-use development in place of the originally envisioned suburban office park. More recently, Trammell Crow Residential filed a proposal with the county last year that would flip a block previously approved for office into an apartment building with a self-storage facility.
If Trammell Crow’s rezoning gets approved, Woodland Pointe will be the only block in the neighborhood that still has approved or existing office space, Union Investment’s application says.
“The Applicant’s proposal to add office on the Property presents an opportunity to restore some of the office floor area that has been converted to residential use over the years … and improve the balance of uses in Woodland Park East,” Brant wrote on behalf of Woodland Pointe’s owner.
Fairfax County staff are reviewing the application to determine whether to formally accept it for consideration.
