Affirmation offered by James Dinegar, Area Protagonists, Trend Watchers

Imagine your future as a commercial Realtor® in a thriving megapolis sprawling from Baltimore through Washington, DC and all of Northern Virginia. 

That is the vision shared by James Dinegar, President and CEO of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, to a ballroom full of Realtors® at NVAR’s 2014 Economic Summit in September. 

Dinegar might be dismissed as a cheerleader for the business community, but his comments instilled a sense of hope for Realtors® battered by a stagnant economy and lagging sales.

“This area will be competing with cities like New York, London and Singapore,” Dinegar predicted, “we’re on maps we’ve never been on before.”
 
Dinegar added more spice to his comments with confidence about the possibility of landing the 2024 Olympics, the success of the then playoff-bound Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles, and the quality urban lifestyle throughout the region.
    
And what’s the next big thing in Dineger’s world?  Transportation.  Especially transportation. “Transportation will be critical,” he predicted.

Dinegar reminded the Realtor® audience that the deepening and widening of the Panama Canal is now well underway.  When it is completed, he explained, massive ships carrying more than 8,000 truck units from the Pacific will dock at Norfolk and Baltimore. They will offload their cargo, helping to make this area the “national gateway” for Pacific trade.

Railroads will need to update their infrastructure to carry this cargo that is bound for East Coast cities and westward, Dinegar said.  Commuters will ride MARC and VRE trains throughout the region, and more easily connect with Metro and Amtrak routes, he pointed out. 

If this all seems a bit difficult to swallow, it may be more plausible when viewed through the lens of some historical economic milestones provided recently by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority FCEDA in commemoration of their fiftieth anniversary this year.
 
Looking backwards, Northern Virginia was a different place 50 years ago -- a largely rural hinterland in the shadow of the nation’s capital. The outline of the impending transformation was barely discernable. 

In a letter to the editor of the Fairfax Times this past August, former and current FCEDA Commission Chairmen Earle C. Williams (1975-78) and Steven L. Davis (2004-present) noted that Fairfax County had fewer than 65,000 jobs and no Fortune 500 headquarters in 1964. It now boasts more than 600,000 jobs, 115 million square feet of commercial office space and 10 Fortune 500 companies headquartered within its boundaries.

“These [survey] results highlight the importance of building the kinds of assets that communities need to grow their economy and business base.” - Gerald L. Gordon, FCEDA President & CEO

As part of its 50-year commemoration, the FCEDA published an online survey asking what respondents thought were the most important economic milestones of the past 50 years. Just like Dinegar’s vision of the future, the answer is….transportation. Thirty five percent of those taking the poll ranked the 1965 completion of the Beltway as the most important milestone for the first 25 years. For the next 25 years, 23 percent ranked at the top the opening of the Silver Line rail line, tying the economic engines of Tysons and Reston to the Metro Transit network.

Gerald L. Gordon, Ph.D. president and CEO of the FCEDA, was quoted in their press release announcing the milestones. “These results highlight the importance of building the kinds of assets that communities need to grow their economy and business base.”

So as Realtors®, how can we get on top of the predicted economic growth? I’ve been told there are two ways to get to the top of a big oak tree….you can start at the bottom and keep climbing, or you can sit on an acorn and wait for it to grow.

This is no time to be sitting on acorns. Take advantage of the many opportunities provided by NVAR so that you have the business strength to get climbing now.

Out for a Drive in 1965
Suppose you had been a successful commercial Realtor® in 1965, and had just paid $50,000 to buy a five bedroom home in a conveniently located Arlington neighborhood. You’re picking up a client at the futuristic Dulles International Airport that opened just three years earlier. 

You dropped down Old Dominion Drive through the village of McLean to Route 123 and headed west. At the intersection with Leesburg Pike, you stopped at the gas station called Tyson’s Corner to fill up with 25-cent-a-gallon gas. While parked there you saw construction crews laying the last of the 24 miles of asphalt on the new Beltway (I-495) nearing completion, and thought that this would be a great place for a shopping center someday. 

Driving further west through dairy farms and rural countryside you saw the new construction for the just-announced  community of Reston being developed from one man’s vision. Coming back to Arlington from Dulles on Route 50 (I-66 wouldn’t be completed until late 1982), you drove through Fairfax and noted the new satellite campus for the University of Virginia that had just opened near downtown. It was named George Mason College. 

Frank Dillow is chair of NVAR's Realtor® Commercial Council and is a vice president in Long & Foster's Commercial Division. He can be reached at francis.dillow@longandfoster.com.