Earlier this month, the National Association for Industrial & Office Parks (NAIOP)’s DC | MD Chapter gathered for a special forum focused on ‘Navigating the Industrial Frontier’ in Frederick. The event featured a panel of industry leaders that explored the dynamic landscape of recently completed and upcoming industrial projects in both The City of Frederick and Frederick County.
City Economic Development Manager, Mary Ford-Naill, and Frederick County Office of Economic Opportunity Director, Lara Fritts, served as panelists – both providing a broad overview of the booming local marketplace.
Frederick, which is the 2nd largest City in Maryland, has experienced tremendous growth in recent years and is currently the fastest growing region for both job creation and residents in the state. The City of Frederick alone has 8 million square feet of commercial projects completed or in the development pipeline. There are several annexations in process as well and several recently completed— including the annexation of two farms adjacent to Frederick Commerce Center.
Complimenting the economic development prospective on the panel were some of the developers leading the wave of investment into the Frederick area.
Featured companies included:
· Matan Companies: a developer with a 3 million SF existing portfolio in Frederick and a pipeline of 2.5 million more – including 1 million SF at Riverside Research Park.
· St. John Properties: a commercial real estate firm that has been in Frederick for over 25 years and has 33 buildings in the market. This past year, the company delivered its last buildings at Riverside Tech Park and is in the planning stages of a 77 acre City-based project at East Park — which it hopes to start construction at in late summer.
· Trammell Crowe Company –a global real estate development firm that recently delivered a 680,000 SF building (Frederick Commerce Center) in The City of Frederick. The building is already half-leased to the company Metrie. Trammell Crowe also holds a significant amount of remaining land purchased with the project that represents a future opportunity for local development.
The panel was moderated by Taylor Davis, the President & COO of Morgan Keller Construction a general contracting and construction management firm that has overseen many of the major local projects.
The panelists compared their experiences of Frederick’s recent growth from the both the perspective of being relatively new to Frederick (Trammell Crow) and those already well-established in the marketplace (St. John Properties and Matan Companies).
Chris Rodriguez of Trammel Crowe stated it was in 2020 - 2021 that his D.C.-based company began to hear again and again from tenants — “Frederick is our centroid. Frederick is where we want to look.”
St. John Properties and Matan representatives Brad Benna and Matt Holbrook confirmed a marked change over the past 10 years in the Frederick marketplace — recalling past trends of higher vacancy rates, little construction, and unmoving rent rates that saw a tipping point at the end of the 20-teens transformed into the current decade’s boom.
The discussion highlighted key motivations for the new surge in local investment, including Frederick’s:
Proximity to the D.C.’s unique resources and wealth
Supply availability and discounted rates in comparison to the I-270 corridor and the Northern Virginian area
Labor force availability — with the ability to pull from a huge geographical area (PA, VA, WV, MD, and DC) and successfully source a diversity range of talent to accommodate companies from biotechs to distribution
High quality of life with lower living costs
Access to world-renowned life science resources including: Fort Detrick, Frederick National Laboratory, and “DNA alley”
Looking to the future, the panel was in consensus Frederick is likely to remain hot as the industry tackles its next big trends — including data centers and redevelopment.
While The City of Frederick is unlikely to be host a data center, the city will be instrumental in hosting the spin-off economy needed to service the sites that may appear in the future in the broader county area.
On the redevelopment front, while Frederick’s marketplace does not have the same major office complex vacancies recently experienced by other jurisdictions —there is always opportunity to creatively reposition properties. Frederick has a long history of reimagine venues of the past for modern use and when the numbers make sense, the development community stands ready to act.
To learn more about commercial opportunities in The City of Frederick, reach out to our economic development team at 301.600.6360 or email business@cityoffrederickmd.gov.