2018 Anne Arundel Business Outlook

December 3, 2018

In the second half of 2018, Anne Arundel County’s location and multi-modal assets continued to translate into significant investment particularly in our industrial market.

In August, the Chesapeake Real Estate Group announced Best Buy’s lease for 500,400 square feet of space within Brandon Woods III, a 259-acre site located near Fort Smallwood Road. It’s the first significant lease for the property where developers intend to build up to a million square feet of industrial development. The move is part of Best Buy’s plans to consolidate three existing locations in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. About 200 jobs are expected at the new location which will support Best Buy’s ecommerce, warehouse and distribution operations throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.

The growing demands of ecommerce is also the reason for DHL’s recent expansion in Anne Arundel County. The shipping company moved from a facility on the perimeter of the airport to a larger warehouse space of more than 48,000 square feet on Charwood Road in Hanover. The new center will allow the company to triple the size of its local office and, along with the installation of a high speed conveyer, increase its distribution operations. DHL employs about 60 workers at the new site.

In October, we also welcomed San Francisco-based Imperfect Produce which has set up a regional distribution center in the former US Foods facility in Severn. Through a subscription, customers receive a box of fruits or vegetables that are deemed too aesthetically imperfect to sell in supermarkets but are otherwise fresh and edible. By locating in northwest Anne Arundel County, one of the region’s largest food hubs, Imperfect Produce benefits from the area’s density of industrial space and transportation assets as it expands its reach to the east coast market. The company expects to start with a team of 25 employees and quadruple that number within a year.

Recently, our state and certainly our regional technology community got some good news that three companies would be relocating to the newly established Cyber Town USA at Port Covington in South Baltimore. News of this kind means new jobs, an economic boost, and new opportunities for our region, making the state stronger as a whole.

Maryland is the nation’s, (if not the world’s), leader in cybersecurity. Here in Anne Arundel County, we can count at least 700 technology companies, many of them doing business at Fort Meade. The businesses develop innovation serving the garrison’s premier tenants such as the Defense Information Systems Agency, the National Security Agency, and U.S. Cyber Command, which is now the tenth combatant command in the world. The expertise of our cybersecurity community is deeply rooted in the military and national security experience. Our commercial enterprises reap the benefits of that unique perspective and bring innovative new technologies to the non-government space.

Our colleagues in the region understand this perspective and have found ways to harness the expertise of cyber professionals from Fort Meade and elsewhere within the federal government. As more technology companies from both in-state and around the world look to Maryland as a way to become a part of the growing cyber industry, we welcome them to join the thousands of others who have helped to establish us as the epicenter of the cybersecurity community for now and for many years to come.

Julie Mussog, CEO of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation

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