My sources tell me that Carrolton Bank is moving it’s corporate offices to Columbia. Fittingly, the bank will be moving into part of the space that formerly housed the corporate offices of BGE Home. BGE Home moved to someplace like Essex last year.
This is yet another corporate headquarters deal for Columbia Gateway, arguably the premier office park in the Baltimore Washington corridor. It has also surpassed the Town Center area as the preferred corporate location. Columbia Gateway now has approximately 150,000 more square feet of office buildings than Town Center. That doesn’t include the 400,000 square feet of new space under construction in Gateway. There are no new office buildings underway in Town Center.
What’s the attraction?
The availability of new Class A space is the main thing. In Columbia Gateway, The Rouse Company and now General Growth Properties have been content with selling land to third party developers who in turn built the office projects. With prime real estate abutting I-95 in the middle of the Baltimore Washington corridor, there was no shortage of developers ready to put up speculative office buildings.
In Town Center, office development stopped in 1992 with the completion of 11000 Broken Land Parkway which was then the headquarters of the Ryland Group before they moved to California. The last third party office development in Town Center was the Merrill Lynch building in 1982. All of the remaining office development land in Town Center is owned by GGP.
GGP needs to make Town Center successful. They are now competing with a monster that they created. They have to make a pretty compelling argument to lure potential prospects down the road from Gateway.
And sooner, rather than later, they really need to build something.
Dream On
3 hours ago
