The huge columns in the garage, for example, are housed in steel plates. The concrete walls are unusually thick, and the laminated windows are not only shatterproof but are anchored to the building by steel rods.
Yet its $10 million of bells and whistles — paid for by the Department of Defense — have not protected One Liberty Center from winding up on the Pentagon's base-closing list.
Just nine days before the Office of Naval Research moved in to its new offices, the Department of Defense recommended moving the research agency, as well as a second tenant, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, to the National Naval Medical Center, a government-owned complex in Bethesda, Md.
The department also proposed transferring the remaining tenant, the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals, to Fort Meade, Md.
One Liberty Center is among 102 office buildings nationwide that could lose Defense Department tenants. In its May 13 announcement proposing that 180 military bases be closed or reduced in size, the Pentagon also said it wanted to consolidate its research agencies and "reduce the department's reliance on leased space, which has historically higher overall costs than government-owned space and generally does not meet Anti-Force Protection standards."
New Defense Department standards, which differ from those for other buildings with government tenants, call for an 82-foot setback. One Liberty Center, which was built according to the security standards in place in 2002, is only 20 feet from the curb, like most city buildings.
If the proposals are adopted, Northern Virginia would bear a heavy economic burden. As much as 7.7 million square feet of leased space could empty out and 23,000 jobs could be affected, according to Cassidy & Pinkard, a real estate services company in the Washington area.
The realignment would occur over several years, however, and the General Services Administration would still be responsible for the long-term leases. The base realignment commission has until Sept. 8 to forward its recommendations to President Bush.
Uncertainty over the realignment plan caused Equity Office Properties, the large office landlord, to take two buildings off the market in the Crystal City section of Arlington. But the company with the most at stake is Vornado Realty Trust, a large real estate investment trust based in New York that is renting an estimated 2.3 million square feet of space in Arlington to the Defense Department, according to Jim Sullivan, a senior analyst for Green Street Advisors of Newport Beach, Calif.
Real estate specialists say the streamlining plan is also likely to ripple through the office market as military contractors search for new offices near their clients.
More than half the vulnerable space — about 4.6 million square feet — is in Arlington County, representing about one-seventh of the privately owned office market, and local officials are fighting back hard.
They are being aided by influential politicians like Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has said that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld violated the realignment process by basing his proposals on a policy to vacate leased space. (In response, Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said the recommendations were consistent with improving "military value.")
The county has also hired a lobbying group led by William S. Cohen, a former secretary of defense, and has proposed that other sites that could provide wider setbacks from the street be considered for the research agencies. The base-closing proposals are yet another blow to Crystal City, a warren of concrete buildings that has been struggling to rebound from the loss of the Patent and Trademark Office, which recently gave up 2.3 million square feet spread over a number of buildings and moved to a new complex of 2.4 million square feet in neighboring Alexandria.
