Prince William County Goes Bio
If Jeff Kaczmarek's dreams come true, Prince William C ounty will be the center of Northern Virginia's bioscience sector.(If a 14-year-old girl's dreams come true,Prince William will be in a speedo.)
The first step for the Prince William County economic development chief is turning the empty space (where we snapped him last week) into one of the few wet lab spaces in the state. Construction starts this month and willfinish late this year.The bioscience accelerator sitsin the middle of the county's Innovation Park and across the street from GMU's science and tech campus. Wet lab space is so expensive thatmost developers aren't willing to build it. The county, which will be the leaseholder of the accelerator, has authorized up to $1.2M for the project.
The idea of the accelerator, a stone's throw from the FBI Northern Virginia Resident Agency (above), is to commercialize innovations coming out of GMU and form early stage life sciences companies. Accelerator residents will pay a base rent of $35 to $39/SF, less than Maryland's average wet lab rates, Jeff says. The accelerator will be marketed globally.
The bioscience accelerator isn't the only development in Prince William. DC-based Roadside Development caught the bug last year when it completed its Stonebridge at Prince William Town Center. The mixed-use project includes retailers that have never been in the county--like REI and South Moon Under--says principal Richard Lake. But Prince William's rising income and education levels, along with a 138k SF Wegmans in Stonebridge, drew higher-end retailers. Next on Roadside's list of county projects: a 7,000-seat baseball stadium; a 1,000-space commuter parking garage; a 125k SF medical office building; and 300 more residential units in Stonebridge.
The county has at least 60 development projects on the radar, including: NOVA Community College's future workforce development center on its Woodbridge campus (above); completion of homes and a clubhouse next to the golf course at SunCal's Potomac Shores project; Sentara Healthcare's expansion plans; Novant Health's Gainesville Medical Center by November; andmore residential, office, assisted living, and a new Harris Teeter at Heritage Hunt in Gainesville. And Jeff tells us he's talking to three developers about more mixed-use projects and says industrial and data centers are heating up in Western PWC. The next gem to get would be the FBI HQ's campus at Potomac Shores. No word yet on GSA's decision but Jeff checks almost daily.
