Amazon scoops up more NoVa land

Published March 29, 2020 by Stephenie Overman

Another quarter, another Amazon.com Inc. buying spree in Northern Virginia.

In January, the company bought 6.2 acres in Arlington County, the location of HQ2, for $154.95 million. According to county records, Acorn Development LLC, an Amazon subsidiary, bought the land from JBG Smith Properties, from which it leases its current HQ2 buildings.

The e-tailer has a policy against sharing its plans for properties, but Buddy Rizer, the executive director of Loudoun County’s economic development department, says he expects Amazon Data Services, also known as Vadata, to use 100 acres it bought last December in Loudoun to build three or four data centers.

H&M Gudelsky Asset Management LLC sold the land to Vadata for $73 million, well over the assessed value of nearly $3.5 million, according to Loudoun County. The land is zoned Mineral Resource/Heavy Industry. Vadata also purchased a 2.4 million-square-foot site just across the border in Fairfax County.

In October, Vadata paid a reported $54 million for 57 acres owned by Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC, an affiliate of Perspecta Inc., according to Fairfax County land records. The property is zoned for industrial development and is home to a building constructed in the 1980s for Electronic Data Systems, the company founded by     the late H. Ross Perot, and now used by Perspecta, a spinoff company that shares much of EDS’ DNA. Outside sits a gigantic bronze and iron eagle, which will be moved to Perspecta’s headquarters in Chantilly’s Stonegate II office park, says Lorraine Corcoran, the company’s vice president of marketing and corporate communications.

Office workers at the Herndon building, part of Perspecta’s corporate division, will move to a building under construction at the Plaza East II business park at state Route 28 and Westfields Boulevard in Fairfax County, not far from their headquarters. Move-in day is expected to be sometime in late April or May, Corcoran says.

“There’s such nostalgia and legacy in that particular location, so there are a lot of bittersweet feelings about leaving that building,” she adds. “We know what an important role that location has played in the history of the company.”

Nonetheless, time marches on. “There are still several hundred acres in Loudoun where data centers would be appropriate, so we still have a long way to go,” Rizer says.