Amazon announced on Tuesday, to the surprise of no one, that it’ll split its second headquarters between New York City and Northern Virginia.
The shock came when the tech giant said that the “urban community in Northern Virginia located less than 3 miles from downtown Washington, D.C.” that it would call home was named “National Landing.” Where?! Turns out, National Landing is the new Virginia government-approved, non-mouthful name for an area encompassing Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yard.
Which leaves us with the question: what will National Landing look like?
JBG Smith, the developer Amazon partnered with to create its Virginia HQ2, explains the changes that’ll take place. Some of them are directly attributable to Amazon renting or purchasing space, whereas others reflect that the company’s decision to land in NoVa will “accelerate the planning, entitlement, design, and development” of National Landing, which JBG Smith says has been underway since mid-2017.
Here’s a sense of those planned shifts, by the numbers:
- 6.2 million square feet: the already-built office space JBG Smith owns in National Landing
- 7.4 million square feet: the additional land JBG Smith owns in National Landing that could be developed
- 500,000 square feet: the amount of existing office space Amazon will lease from JBG Smith at 241 18th Street S., 1800 South Bell Street, and 1770 Crystal Drive
- 4.1 million square feet: the maximum amount of land in JBG Smith’s “future development pipeline” that Amazon will purchase
- 270,000 square feet: the total amount of rentable office and retail space at 1700 Crystal Drive, which JBG Smith is planning to start building in 2018, and expects to rent all of the office space to Amazon
- 2019: the year JBG Smith expects to begin construction on the first office building for Amazon
- 130,000 square feet: the size of Central District Retail, one of the developments that JBG Smith is building to create a “dynamic repositioning” of National Landing. Construction is slated to start before the end of 2018.
- 750: the amount of multifamily units in two buildings at 1900 Crystal Drive that JBG Smith plans to begin building in 2019
- 25,000: the number of jobs Amazon is promising to the Commonwealth of Virginia
- $295 million: the non-general fund money that Virginia is promising, at maximum, to invest in better mobility to the area, like additional entrances to Potomac Yard and Crystal City Metro stations, Route 1 improvements, a connector bridge between Crystal City and Washington National Airport, and more. (If Amazon brings more than 25,000 jobs, Virginia will invest more money in transportation.)
- $375 million: the amount of performance-based investments Virginia is planning over the course of 20 years for new master’s degree programs in computer science at George Mason University’s campus in Arlington, and for Virginia Tech to build what it’s billing as an “Innovation Campus” in Alexandria
- $570 million: funds jointly from Arlington County and the city of Alexandria for transportation projects related to National Landing
Rachel Kurzius











