Social media giant TikTok appears to be eyeing space in Herndon.
Fairfax County’s land use database shows that the video-sharing service has applied for a permit at 13641 Sunrise Valley Drive near the Innovation Center Metro station.
The application was accepted by the county on Feb. 8 to allow commercial additions and alterations for a new tenant layout, but it’s unclear how much square footage the company will lease or what function the space will serve.
TikTok didn’t return multiple requests for comment from FFXnow. The applicant address listed on county permits is for the company’s California office at 5800 Bristol Parkway in Culver City, according to documents reviewed by FFXnow.
The company originated in 2016 when ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, launched the video-sharing platform Douyin. After success in China and Thailand, the company expanded in 2018 under the brand TikTok, which has since become one of the world’s most dominant social media apps.
In recent years, TikTok has come under scrutiny in the U.S. for its Chinese ties, which have raised national security issues, and its possible effects on children and teens. The company’s CEO and other social media leaders testified before Congress on Jan. 31, as federal lawmakers consider privacy, safety and content regulations.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has prohibited TikTok on state government devices, and he advocated for a ban on the platform for kids under 18.
This is not the first time that permits by TikTok have surfaced in the county’s database. Last year, a permit application for an interior tenant fit-out at 1900 Reston Metro Plaza was submitted in August but then quickly voided.
At the time, the company didn’t respond to comment requests from FFXnow. A representative for Comstock, the developer that owns the property, told FFXnow there was “no deal in progress at Reston Station” for TikTok.
TikTok established its global headquarters in Singapore and Culver City in 2020. Its owner, ByteDance, also has offices in the Seattle area, New York City, Chicago and D.C., among other U.S. cities.
Image via Google Maps
Global cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks Inc. will lease one of Boston Properties’ new office towers in Reston Town Center.
The company — which currently leases space at RTC West (12110 Sunset Hills Road) — plans to occupy 58,000 square feet of space at a 20-story office tower in Reston Town Center, the Washington Business Journal reported.
The new lease was signed on Jan. 12 for 58,000 square feet in the tower at 1950 Opportunity Way — one of two office buildings built in Boston Properties’ nearly 5-million-square-foot expansion, just north of the Reston Town Center Metro station.
According to the WBJ, the building at 1950 Opportunity Way will be close to fully leased with the Palo Alto deal. Other tenants of the paired office towers, which total 1.1 million square feet of space, include Volkswagen and Fannie Mae.
In a quarterly earnings call in late January, Boston Properties Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Michael LaBell noted that Reston Town Center is 94% leased.
“Because it is such high quality kind of a live work play kind of place, and these clients really, really value that,” LaBell said during the call. “So we’re outperforming from a rental rate perspective, and we’re seeing positive absorption there.”
LaBelle told investors that Reston Town Center had signed a “60,000 square foot new lease with a technology company” that’s relocating but didn’t name the tenant.
Originally approved by Fairfax County in 2018, the Reston Town Center expansion is planned for 4.8 million square feet of development on a 33-acre site northwest of the Sunset Hills Road and Reston Parkway intersection. Skymark Reston Town Center, a 40-story residential building, is currently under construction.
The owner of 8221 Old Courthouse Road has received the Fairfax County Planning Commission’s support for its plan to convert the 1980s-era Tysons office building into multi-family housing.
The proposal filed by 8221 Old Courthouse Road LC — an affiliate of residential developer Dittmar Company — seeks to repurpose the existing, three-story building as one and two-bedroom rental apartments. Up to 55 units are planned, including six workforce dwelling units.
While the conversion won’t alter the building’s exterior, it will replace approximately 90 surface parking spaces with a publicly accessible, 7,840 square-foot pocket park along Old Courthouse Road and a private, 8,400-square-foot outdoor amenity space for residents on the property’s eastern side, which abuts an Extended Stay America hotel.
The developer has also agreed to update Old Courthouse and Lord Fairfax Road to the west with expanded sidewalks and landscaping panels, along with high-visibility crosswalks and new curb ramps at the intersection.
“The applicant — again the long-term owner of this building — is very excited to be looking forward, turning the page, turning to the next chapter in this building’s life cycle,” said Robert Brandt, the applicant’s representative at the planning commission’s Dec. 6 public hearing. “We think this is an excellent opportunity to convert it and add some additional housing here on this site and in Tysons.”
The elimination of more than half of the 2-acre site’s parking took center stage at the hearing, which concluded with the commission unanimously recommending that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approve the application.
Though no public speakers attended the hearing, several community members sent written comments to express concern that the project will create parking and traffic issues, particularly for Freedom Hill Elementary School to the south, according to Providence District Commissioner Jeremy Hancock.
Reserved for residents and their guests, the 66 parking spots that will be provided meet the county’s current minimum requirements for the Planned Tysons Corner (PTC) Urban District, which the developer has opted into, Brandt told the commission. New, generally reduced off-street parking standards that the Board of Supervisors adopted in September won’t take effect until Jan. 1.
“We are not requesting a parking reduction, and the applicant and staff, I believe, are comfortable with the amount of parking that we are providing,” Brandt said.
He noted that the property owner intends to deliver the 66 parking spaces even if the number of apartment units decreases as the design gets refined. An additional eight spots will be added off-site through striping on Lord Fairfax Road.
According to Brandt, converting the office building into housing will decrease traffic around the site by 207 daily trips on average. Parents will also no longer have to compete with commuting workers when driving their kids to and from school.
Hancock, however, suggested more could be done to try to mitigate traffic during those pick-up and drop-off times, especially while the apartment building is under construction.
“There really is only that one entrance there [to Freedom Hill Elementary],” he said. “I hope it’s acceptable to you that we continue to work on that and maybe address some of the concerns that were raised so we’re increasing the impact on those particular times in school.”
Brandt agreed that there’s “an opportunity to continue that discussion” before the application goes before the Board of Supervisors, which doesn’t have a public hearing scheduled yet.
Planning Commission Chairman Phil Niedzielski-Eichner, an at-large member who previously represented Providence District, called the application “a remarkable improvement” over what the developer initially brought to the county in February.
“The reduction in the impervious surface and expansion of the open space, particularly along the roadway…will add to the value of the neighborhood,” Niedzielski-Eichner said, “because it’s an amenity that will likely be replicated if other buildings in the area have the same ability to be converted. I suspect that’s going to happen, and I think that can only benefit the area.”
A land design and engineering firm will expand soon with a new office in Fairfax County, where it already regularly consults on development projects.
Headquartered in Woodbridge, Land Design Consultants (LDC) announced Thursday (Nov. 9) that it will open a second Northern Virginia office in Metroplace I, an 8-floor office building at 2650 Park Tower Drive near the Dunn Loring Metro station.
Intended to give the company a base closer to its clients in the D.C. area, the new, 4,000-square-foot office will focus on landscape architecture services with studio space for 20 employees, who are expected to move in this coming January, according to a press release.
“This is an exciting step forward as our company celebrates nearly 40 years offering land development engineering, planning and surveying services to our valued clients,” LDC President Matt Marshall said in the press release. “This new office will allow us to continue our mission of providing technical expertise, sustainable design and quality work that contributes to the success of our clients’ projects.”
The landscape architecture studio will be led by LDC Director of Project Managment Jessica Bradshaw, according to the firm.
Founded in 1985, LDC provides planning, civil engineering and surveying services to developers. Its Fairfax County work has included The Lofts at Reston Station, Stonebrook at Westfields, and the redevelopment of the Four Seasons Tennis Club in Merrifield into the Marche’ townhomes.
Current projects include The Flats at Tysons, a condominium development that will be built on a parking lot behind the Fairfax Square shopping center, and Workhouse Place, single-family houses currently under construction next to the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton.
MetroPlace I has four spaces available for lease, totaling 12,875 square feet, according to property manager Lincoln Property Company.
Another Fairfax County office building will soon morph into a live/work development, where units are designed to serve as a home, a workplace or both.
A proposed repurposing of the 10-story office building at 2000 Corporate Ridge in Tysons got approved Tuesday (Oct. 24) by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors after a straightforward public hearing where the only community member who signed up to speak couldn’t be reached.
The unanimous vote gave another win to Madison Highland, which was created last year by developers Madison Marquette and Highland Square Holdings to focus on live/work lofts. The team has now led six office conversions, including at the Skyline Center in Bailey’s Crossroads and Inova’s former headquarters in Merrifield.
Like those other projects, the Corporate Ridge repositioning will revitalize an underutilized property with a live/work concept that offers flexibility for tenants and new amenities for the general community, including pedestrian paths and park space, McGuireWoods land use lawyer Greg Riegle argued while representing the developer.
“The potential remains for this building to be predominantly or even exclusively workspace as markets and needs evolve,” Riegle said. “As we try to sort out the new workplace, to say that flexibility is the name of the game is a significant understatement. This project embraces clearly evolving trends with respect to how and where people are choosing to work.”
The newly approved development plan converts 2000 Corporate Ridge into 250 live/work units. A 4-story, 644-space parking garage on the 8-acre site will be retained, while the surface parking will largely be replaced with a private tenant amenity area and publicly accessible open space.
Totaling 3.2 acres, the open space includes a neighborhood park, a preserve with a boardwalk and bird-watching station and a “reforested hillside” with an 8-foot-wide, ADA-accessible trail that will provide a connection to the pedestrian bridge over the adjacent Capital Beltway (I-495).
Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik acknowledged that the project’s proximity to the Beltway could lead to noise issues, as the Fairfax County Planning Commission discussed last month, but she expressed confidence in the developer’s planned window upgrades and other mitigation measures.
“I do believe that the developer’s design provides a significant improvement in the overall pedestrian experience,” Palchik said. “I know that they are committed both to…the private as well as the publicly accessible amenities and to have passive and active recreation throughout the property, and its environment aesthetics will be considerably upgraded by reducing unnecessary surface parking, added landscaping and the integration of best management practices.”
As Northern Virginia’s office market continues to struggle, Fairfax County has seen a slew of development projects seeking to replace commercial uses with residential ones. In Tysons, the board approved a shift to apartments for a planned office building near the Spring Hill Metro station, and a proposal to convert the former Sheraton Tysons Hotel to housing is in the works.
Recalling that the county studied building repositionings even before the pandemic, Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross said it’s been satisfying to see that report’s strategies “in action” and asked whether there are any plans to provide an update.
Tracy Strunk, director of the county’s Department of Planning and Development, confirmed that staff are compiling a “white paper” on how building conversions have affected the office and residential markets. It could be released next year as the county works to update its policy plan, which governs everything from land use and housing to environmental and revitalization goals.
“I just think we really need to blow our own horn and celebrate something that a lot of people thought we shouldn’t be doing or just this wasn’t going to work, and it’s working, so I look forward to that,” Gross said.
The workers who clean office buildings around Fairfax County won’t have to hit the picket lines anytime soon.
The union representing about 9,100 commercial office cleaners in the D.C. area reached a tentative agreement yesterday (Tuesday) for a new contract with property owners in the Washington Service Contractors Association (WSCA), averting a potential strike.
Expressing frustration with wages that haven’t kept up with the rising costs of food, rent and other basic needs, union members in Fairfax and Loudoun counties voted unanimously last week to authorize a strike if an agreement wasn’t reached by the time their existing contract expires on Sunday (Oct. 15).
“These men and women proved that collective action has the power to improve jobs and lives, just like other low-wage workers deserve nationwide,” said Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of 32BJ SEIU, the Service Employees International Union’s branch for the D.C. region.
Under the proposed contract, which will go to members for ratification next week, cleaners will get hourly wage increases of $3.55 to $3.75 over four years, according to the union. Pay currently ranges from $12.50 in Loudoun and Prince George’s counties — just over Virginia’s minimum wage — to $18.60.
The union’s 3,000-plus cleaners in Fairfax County, Arlington and Alexandria, who currently earn $15 an hour, will get the $3.55 raise, set to take effect in increments every July 1 through 2027, according to WSCA negotiator Peter Chatilovicz.
The larger increase of $3.75 will go to Loudoun and Prince George’s workers to keep them above the minimum wage, which will rise to $15 on Jan. 1, 2026.
The contract also preserves existing benefits for both full-time and part-time cleaners, per 32BJ SEIU:
Under the contract, janitors maintain access to free professional training and language courses as well as legal services for concerning issues such as immigration, family and matrimonial matters, and housing law among others. Full-time cleaners in all regions will maintain employer-paid health care, including prescription drugs, dental, vision and life insurance. Part-time cleaners will continue to receive life insurance and family dental benefits.
According to the union, the agreement was reached over seven bargaining sessions that started on June 22.
While pay was the primary point of contention, the union also took issue with a proposal that would’ve reduced shifts for new employees from five to four hours long. The suggestion was taken off the table last week, as local elected officials — including almost all Fairfax County supervisors — signed pledges and appeared at rallies in support of the cleaners.
A 32BJ spokesperson confirmed that the change in shifts was not part of the tentative agreement.
“I think it was a fair agreement for both sides,” Chatilovicz said. “We managed to, I think, give some very reasonable wage increases to the employees. Benefits all stayed the same without any further costs, and like I said, I think both sides were pleased to be able to reach an agreement before we had to worry about the contract expiration.”
The contract negotiations with the WSCA came amid a frenzy of labor actions across the country. While film and TV writers recently ended a nearly five-month strike, Hollywood actors and the United Auto Workers are still on the picket lines, and health care workers for Kaiser Permanente may walk off the job again in early November after a strike from Oct. 4-7 failed to produce an agreement.
More office space could be coming soon to an existing secure campus in Chantilly’s Westfields International Center.
COPT Stonecroft is seeking Fairfax County’s permission to expand the amount of office space at the park center, which is located at 4850 Stonecroft Blvd. Sought for an unnamed “Federal user that desires to expand its footprint on the Property,” the additional development requires upzoning to allow more office uses.
In a Sept. 28 application, the applicant’s representative said the recent addition of high-quality residential townhomes and apartments have made Westfields an “even more desirable corporate location.”
“The expansion represents a significant and desired investment in office use within the Dulles Suburban Center and will allow the Westfields Corporate Park to continue to succeed in its original goal of providing a prestigious and desired corporate office atmosphere,” McGuireWoods land use lawyer Scott Adams wrote in the application on the developer’s behalf.
Two additional buildings — which were originally the subject of a 2016 application — are proposed. The buildings would stand at 120 feet and contain a little over 1 million square feet of space. A new seven-level parking garage with 2,765 spaces is also proposed on the western portion of the property.
In 2016, COPT Stonecroft, a division of COPT Defense Properties, sought a height increase for three new office buildings to accommodate an unidentified, high-security tenant, but only one of the three buildings has been constructed.
The proposal is in the initial stages of the county’s approval process and has not yet been formally accepted for review.
Image via Google Maps
Another strike may be on the horizon for the D.C. area, this time led by office cleaners who say wages have stagnated even after they were expected to keep working through the pandemic.
About 9,100 janitors, more than 3,000 of them in Northern Virginia, are voting this week on whether to go on strike if they’re unable to agree on a new contract with the Washington Service Contractors Association (WSCA) before the existing one expires on Oct. 15.
Cleaners employed in commercial buildings across Fairfax and Loudoun counties unanimously voted on Tuesday (Oct. 3) to authorize a strike, following the lead of their colleagues in D.C., who voted a day earlier, according to 32BJ SEIU, the Service Employees International Union’s branch for the D.C. region.
Coinciding with a three-day strike by Kaiser Permanente employees that’s reportedly the largest ever by U.S. health care workers, Baltimore area cleaners were set to vote yesterday (Wednesday), followed by Montgomery County workers today and Arlington County workers tomorrow.
“No one wants to strike, but we are ready to strike if employers keep pushing cuts that cleaners can’t afford,” 32BJ SEIU Executive Vice President Jaime Contreras said.
According to the union, a core sticking point in the contract negotiations, which began in June, has been a proposed reduction in shift lengths from five to four hours for about 1,100 cleaners — a third of the Northern Virginia workforce.
The change would amount to a 20% pay cut for the affected cleaners, who would have earn $100 less per week and have less time to do the same amount of work, the union says.
Peter Chatilovicz, the WSCA’s lead negotiator, told FFXnow yesterday that proposal has been taken off the table, noting that it would’ve primarily affected D.C. workers. The goal was “to provide flexibility to bring in new workers,” not cut wages for existing ones, as commercial property owners adapt to a challenging office market, he said.
The region has lost about 1,000 office janitorial jobs in recent years, according to 32BJ SEIU. A union spokesperson confirmed the shifts proposal was “verbally” withdrawn, but as of last night, nothing has been put on the record in writing.
The cleaners and WSCA last held contract negotiations four years ago, and there’s a “tentative agreement” for the next one to be the same length, extending to October 2027, Chatilovicz says. He’s “cautiously optimistic” that a deal will be reached in time, but the two groups are still split on pay.
“That’s the big issue right now is coming up with a wage compromise so that employees who are not the highest paid employees in the area or in America get a fair wage during this time, and so that we’re able to still be competitive and deal with the issues in the industry,” Chatilovicz said. “So, it’s a typical negotiation where we’re trying to exchange proposals and come up with a compromise that management can live with and the union is satisfied with.”
Under their current contract, Fairfax County cleaners earn $15 per hour, while Loudoun cleaners get $12.50 an hour. They also receive benefits like paid vacation, holidays and sick leave, health insurance if they work full-time and access to a training, education and legal services fund, per 32BJ SEIU.
While those rates exceed Virginia’s minimum wage, albeit just barely in Loudoun County, they’re not enough to match inflated prices and soaring rents, the union argues.
Alejandria Paz, a member of the union’s bargaining team who has worked as a cleaner at 1881 Campus Commons in Reston for over a decade, says she’s already struggling to keep up with the rising costs of food, rent, transportation and other necessities.
However, she also sees the prospect of reduced hours and pay as a frustrating reflection of how little attitudes toward cleaning staff have changed, despite the heightened attention to building cleanliness and ventilation brought by COVID-19. Read More
At a time when cities from D.C. to San Francisco are grappling with historically high vacancy rates, Fairfax City is feeling pretty good about the rising demand for its commercial space.
General commercial vacancy rates have dropped from 6.6% at the beginning of 2023 to 6% in the third quarter, Fairfax City Economic Development (FCED) — a partnership between the city’s economic development office and the Fairfax City Economic Development Authority (EDA) — reported last week.
The downward trend extends to both offices, where vacancies have gone from 9.8% to 9%, and retail, which has dropped from 2.8% to 2.3%, according to FCED.
Local economic development officials attribute the city’s relative success on this front to lower market-rate rents and “more right-sized opportunities” compared to larger markets. Office rental rates in the city currently average $24.8 per square foot, while retail space rents at an average of $30.7 per square foot.
“This data shows that Fairfax City is competitive and in demand,” FCED Director and President Christopher Bruno said in a statement. “As a city, we provide our residents and businesses excellent services and they want to be here. Northern Virginia, and Fairfax City, are the ideal locations to start, expand, and develop new companies.”
The declines reported by Fairfax City defy nationwide trends in commercial real estate. A recent report by the firm Colliers found that, as of the second quarter, 20.2% of commercial spaces in the U.S. were unoccupied, a rate that exceeds the previous record set during the 2008 recession, according to Business Insider.
In July, Fairfax County, which has the country’s second largest suburban office market, reported a 16.7% office vacancy rate — its highest in 10 years.
With the pandemic-fueled embrace of remote and hybrid work looking more like a long-term reality, despite some companies mandating office returns, many businesses have opted for smaller workspaces, while property owners try to entice tenants with renovations and added amenities.
Like other localities, Fairfax County has seen a surge in development projects seeking to convert or replace underutilized commercial space with housing, raising some concerns about how the shift will affect taxpayers and public services.
Fairfax City hasn’t seen as robust a push to turn offices into housing, receiving one inquiry about a potential conversion from an office building owner but no formal applications, according to Nicole Toulouse, FCED’s senior assistant director of business investment.
Toulouse, who’s also the senior vice president of the Fairfax City EDA, couldn’t permitted to publicly identify the building, since a proposal hasn’t been officially submitted. But she says it’s a “highly tenanted building” with a vacancy rate under 4%.
“To me this shows that is likely a general portfolio move by the owner and not based on the performance of the building,” Toulouse told FFXnow.
As part of its pandemic recovery efforts, FCED has established several initiatives aimed at filling the city’s commercial spaces, including a grant program for businesses that lease space in high-vacancy office buildings and a Technology Zone that gives tax incentives to tech businesses that sign a lease lasting five years or longer.
While not related to leasing, the city has also partnered with the Town of Vienna to develop a culinary workforce training program that will support local restaurants.
“We’ve long felt that Fairfax City is optimally positioned for the relocation and growth of businesses, particularly those looking to locate in the geographic center of Northern Virginia’s steady and innovative economy,” Fairfax City EDA Chair Beth Young said. “FCED’s programs create expanded opportunities for businesses who otherwise may look elsewhere.”
The Capital Beltway’s proximity to 2000 Corporate Ridge is both a boon and a potential obstacle to plans to convert the office building into a live/work development.
The accessibility of Tysons Corner Center and other attractions will make the property enticing to residents and workers, who can now cross I-495 with a pedestrian bridge, McGuireWoods land use lawyer Greg Riegle argued on developer Madison Highland’s behalf at a Fairfax County Planning Commission public hearing on Sept. 14.
However, county staff fear noise from the adjacent highway could deter those same residents and workers from utilizing the park and amenity spaces proposed to replace most of the 8-acre site’s surface parking.
The developer, going under the name McLean Corporate Ridge Property LLC, has committed to some mitigation measures, including window upgrades and evergreen tree plantings to separate the public park areas from an existing sound wall along the Beltway, according to a staff report.
“There still remains outdoor recreation and park space that is encumbered by noise impacts that exceed Policy Plan guidance,” staff said in the report. “Staff continues to recommend creative solutions, like artistic walls, to further mitigate noise impacts to better be in conformance with the Policy Plan or to increase the useability of the space of future residents should be further explored by the applicant.”
Despite those concerns, which Riegle noted could be further addressed at the more detailed site plan phase, county staff and the planning commission recommended that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approve Madison Highland’s rezoning application.
Following up on similar projects in Bailey’s Crossroads and Merrifield, the developer is seeking to convert the 10-story office building northeast of the Beltway and Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) into up to 250 live/work units, which can serve as housing, a workplace or both. Between 10 and 13% of the units will be designated as workforce dwelling units, in accordance with the county’s guidelines for Tysons.
Even after recent renovations, 2000 Corporate Ridge is struggling with vacancies in a slow office market, according to Riegle. Compared to a full replacement, the proposed conversion would be a more efficient and environmentally friendly way to put the building “to productive use,” while keeping the door open for future commercial uses, he told the planning commission.
“The building as it exists doesn’t contribute anything to the fabric or economy of Tysons, and there’s not a good way forward, absent repositioning here,” Riegle said. “The tactical repositioning is good for the site, it’s good for the community, and frankly, it’s good for the remaining office opportunities in Tysons.” Read More