By Taylor Holland
ARLINGTON, Virginia — The fight to lure the National Science Foundation — and its 2,000 employees and $7 billion annual budget — out of Arlington County is heating up, with several northern Virginia communities maneuvering to become the agency's new home.
The General Services Administration, the federal government's real estate manager, this month pushed back the deadline for the foundation to move into a new facility to 2016, a two-year delay that will give builders time to construct a new headquarters.
The extension means that sites along Metro's nearly completed silver line — including Tysons Corner, Reston and Herndon — will be available to compete for the science foundation, whose lease in Ballston expires next year.
Fairfax County officials, however, declined to discuss whether they will enter the bidding.
Still, it is now a "wide-open competition" for northern Virginia sites that can provide cheaper space for the agency . . . .As we have pointed out in a recent post citing comprehensive research by the New York Times, subsidizing corporations to come, stay, or expand in any locality has been a largely useless and clearly unfair way to spur economic stability if not growth. Homeowners are left to pick up the costs of the subsidy to the corporate arrivals and often build and maintain the infrastructure to support the new businesses.
The result: Growing residential property taxes and under-investment in residents' needs--schools, parks, the arts, social services for the needy, etc.--so that corporations will come or stay. This is apparently the case with the NSF which is looking to leave nearby Arlington County after 20 years if it can garner enough swag despite the pleas of Virginia's two US Senators for NSF to stay at Ballston. And, as NYT points out, often these incentives don't work.
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