Inside Capital One's New Tysons Headquarters, The D.C. Region's Tallest Building
Capital One employees have already begun working, eating, lounging, lifting weights and even playing basketball inside the bank's new Tysons headquarters, now the tallest occupied building in the D.C. region.
At 470 feet tall, the building reaches higher than any building in the DMV other than the 555-foot Washington Monument, eclipsing Rosslyn's recently delivered 387-foot CEB Tower. It could soon be surpassed by another building in Tysons if the plan for a 600-foot-tall tower at the Spring Hill station is approved.
But many of the amenities Capital One employees and community members will enjoy are much closer to the ground. The next phase of the development will include a 1,600-seat performing arts center, a 300-seat black box theater, a 1.2-acre sky park with a beer garden, bocce courts and an amphitheater, plus residential and office buildings. It will also feature over 100K SF of retail anchored by an 80K SF Wegmans.
The grocery store is targeting a 2020 opening, but the completed building also has retail space that will be occupied much sooner. City Works will open a 10K SF restaurant and bar with 90 beers on tap, Taco Bamba will open a fast-casual shop and Starbucks will open a café.
Capital One has moved in roughly 2,000 of the 3,000 employees who will work at the headquarters, and it is planning a grand opening in December. The opening comes more than four years after the project's November 2014 groundbreaking. The new tower sits directly next to Capital One's previous headquarters, and the bank leases space in three additional buildings in Tysons.
Employees can commute to the new headquarters by Metro, with the McLean station less than a half-mile away, take a bus to the building's private bus loop or park their bicycle in one of two storage rooms. The building also has six parking garage levels, three below ground and on floors three through five.
After entering through the first-floor lobby, employees come to the seventh-floor sky lobby. From there, they can walk to the amenities on the sixth and seventh floors or take the elevators to the workspaces on floors nine through 18 and 20 through 31.
The 19th floor, a connection space between the low-rise and high-rise portions of the tower, features meeting rooms, lounge areas, a café, a FedEx Office business area and a Power Up bar for technology help.
The workspace floors each look roughly the same, with differing color schemes. Employees have individual assigned desks that can move between sitting and standing positions. The floors also have open seating areas, movable whiteboards and a variety of meeting rooms from individual phone booths to four-person huddle rooms, eight-person team rooms and larger conference rooms.
Employees can reserve time in the meeting rooms through the company's internal system, and tablets by the door of each room show its availability. Capital One's workspace team also created an internal app that shows the availability of meeting rooms and parking spaces and helps people find their way around the campus.
Each floor is connected with interior stairs, alternating on either side of the building, to make employees on each level feel more connected. Open seating areas around each staircase allow for impromptu meetings.
The main cafeteria is on the seventh floor. The options include several market-style stands with a variety of cuisines. The cafeteria also includes a deli that turns into a bar in the late afternoon hours. The bar can be reserved for social events and opens to an outdoor terrace that overlooks the rest of the campus.
The cafeteria floor also includes a large coffee shop and seating area. It has a rainbow thread installation from Gabriel Dawe, whose art has been displayed at the Renwick Gallery. The building features pieces from other well-known artists, including an installation from Tim Prentice.
The sixth floor features 15 conference rooms. The largest can fit 700 people at full capacity and can also be divided into smaller rooms. Including the smaller conference rooms on each workspace floor, the building has over 100 total meeting facilities.
Also on the sixth floor is a full-sized basketball court, which can also be used for volleyball. The wall features a picture from nearby George Mason University's historic run to the NCAA men's basketball Final Four in 2006. The company has organized leagues for five-on-five basketball and volleyball games.
Next to the basketball court is the 15K SF fitness center. It features a variety of free weights, lifting machines, cardio machines and a group exercise room. Employees can take part in instructor-led classes. The fitness facility also offers set workout plans that connect to nutrition information in the cafeteria for employees to sync up their exercise and eating habits.
The rooftop of the 470-foot-tall building offers views throughout the D.C. region. But it is largely maintenance space rather than amenities, and does not allow the public to venture to the top.
The campus is the latest in Tysons' efforts to add dense, mixed-use developments around its four Metro stations. Also at the McLean station, the Scotts Run development is planned to include 8M SF of mixed-use space from CityLine Partners and Skanska.
Capital One's 24-acre campus is planned to include 5M SF of development at full build-out. The bank has several partners on the development, including Cushman & Wakefield as development manager, JLL as property manager, and Davis and Gilford Construction as general contractor, plus Bonstra Haresign Architects, HKS and CallisonRTKL as architects.
