Harford County, Maryland: BRAC Impact

You have heard that BRAC would be big for Harford County, Maryland and it is proving to be just that.

Here is some of what is happening:

• Just inside of Aberdeen Proving Ground, 526,000 square feet in new space for an office and technology park called The Gate is being constructed.

• 40 percent of all new office building construction now underway in the U.S. is located in the Baltimore-Washington area, mainly because of the Base Realignment and Closure Initiative.

• At APG, defense contractors that have already signed leases (and some have already moved in) include CACI, with 60,000 square feet, Raytheon Co., 75,000 square feet, L-3 75,000 square feet, General Dynamics, 12,000 square feet and The Boeing Co., 6,000 square feet.

• Preparation is underway to break ground on two new buildings totaling 180,000 square feet.

• County officials are promoting flex working hours and van and carpooling as ways to ease the anticipated traffic increase.

• About 1,800 new jobs have already moved into APG, and beginning this fall, another 2,500 workers will begin to arrive, many from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.  Including private sector jobs, the new positions will total around 10,000 by September 2011.

• 42 new defense contractors have already moved in, with 24 of them moving in the last six months.

• Major construction is under way on the sprawling base.  The huge building, known as C4ISR, an acronym for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence Surveillance, Reconnaissance, opened its doors this month to mostly civilian Army employees.  It is the largest building in Harford County.

• Harford County has invested in a business park to help smaller incubator companies get established in the BRAC zone.  The park, called the Harford Business Innovation Center, is located in Riverside, about three miles from the APG gate.