Exhibit Center Gets New Tenant

The top floor of the former Columbia Exhibit Center has been vacant since WCI Communities closed their condo sales center in early summer 2009. Since then there has been speculation that the building might be torn down as part of the Town Center redevelopment plans.

For now at least, it appears that the building will remain as is. Red Arch Solutions, a cyber technology company, recently signed a lease to occupy the former sales center space above the restaurants on the lake level. The approximately 10,000 square foot suite will be the firm’s new headquarters. They will be relocating from the Symphony Woods Office Center, also in Town Center.

This news will likely cheer the folks at Preservation Howard County who have placed the building, along the former Rouse Company headquarters building, on their top ten sites of endangered sites in HoCo. They believe that this building is important because it was designed by world renowned architect, Frank Gehry. In truth the building was actually designed by Dave O’Malley, a partner of Gehry when his firm was called Gehry, Walsh & O’Malley. Dave also did the design work on Merriweather Post Pavilion and the Banneker Road fire house. The former Rouse Company headquarters building is the only building in HoCo that Gehry actually designed