New Jobs Going South

Though Fort Meade is certainly the dominant engine of growth in the Baltimore Washington corridor, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Fulton is another hugely important contributor to our economic health. This week, in an article by Mike Santa Rita in the Columbia Flier we learned that JHU/APL has broken ground on a “$60-million building dedicated to space research.”

Approximately three years ago, the research lab acquired the property across the street from their main campus from Westvaco and dubbed it the “South Campus”. They have since cleared the site to make room for this new growth.

According to Dick Story, the chief of the Howard County Economic Development Authority, JHU/APL has built over 1.5 million square feet of Class A office space on their main campus since 2000. That is roughly equal to the total amount of Class A office space in Columbia Town Center. The new south campus can accommodate another million square feet of office space.

The center of gravity of growth and development in Howard County is moving south. This bodes well for the second generation of restaurants in Maple Lawn.