The building is owned by Advance Realty Group, which has 1.6 million sf of assets in the DC market. For most of last year its DC portfolio was largely fully leased but the firm is expecting some vacancies to develop this year as a few leases come up for renewal, according to David Fisher, SVP and regional managing director of Advance'sWashington, DC region. Currently it has 72,000-sf of space available in its portfolio: 35,154-sf at 3650 Concorde Pkwy., which is also located in the Avion Business Park, and 36,692-sf at 45240 Business Court at Loudoun Plaza I in Sterling. All together, it expects to have 270,000 sf of space rolling over in its DC area portfolio this year.

Lease strategies for many Northern Virginia property owners are in flux as the region struggles to absorb delivery of new buildings in the face of corporate and government spending retrenchment. A new GVA Advantis report points to the decision by Northrop Grumman--another major government contractor--to renege on earlier plans to consolidate part of its workforce into one of the new speculative projects in Herndon as an example. Instead, in Q4 '07 it decided to keep workers in existing locations. In Northern Virginia, by year-end 2007 vacancies rose to 11.3% from a Q3 rate of 10.6% and a 2006 rate of 9.4%, according to the report's figures. There is about 4.6 million sf of office space still under construction, GVA Advantis also reports.