Steve Burns
WMAL.com

ARLINGTON – (WMAL) Some Northern Virginia communities that are heavily dependent on the defense sector could start seeing a resurgence after lawmakers approved a $500 billion infusion last week.

The new cash could represent an end to stopgap measures and general uncertainty in the industry, which may have been stifling contractors from expanding business. The unpredictability over the last several years has left places like Crystal City with a growing office vacancy problem.

“Northern Virginia, particularly, is a company town. The company is the federal government. The Defense Department, the Pentagon, is the core of that economic activity,” former Congressman Jim Moran told WMAL. “There is no entity more important to Northern Virginia’s economy than the Defense Department.”

The deal approved by lawmakers and signed by President Trump last week represents an end to the fiscal belt-tightening that the defense sector had found itself in for most of the last decade. It brings in half a trillion dollars of new funding over the next two years. There will also be new battles over where that new money goes.

In all likelihood, one of the first places that may see a resurgence are the communities immediately around the Pentagon, traditionally home to many defense contractors.

“We know that a lot of them have been hesitant to, or holding back on signing long-term office leases as long as we were continually in this land of continuing resolutions,” Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol told WMAL. “Now that there might be a little more stability, we hope we could potentially see, if not expansion, potentially at least some willingness to enter in to long-term lease agreements.”

Cristol noted Arlington has been working diligently to diversify its economy to not be so closely linked to the whims of lawmakers holding the federal government’s purse strings, and is also making an effort to convert unused office space into innovative uses, like housing and temporary work space.

“We hope we’ve seen the peak of that office vacancy rate,” Cristol said.

Moran was hopeful that more spending may mean more activity.

“It can’t hurt,” he said. “I do think that as the defense budget increases, you’re going to see more and more activity.”

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