Ike Leggett, in his State of the County speech, said:
We start by creating a Public Safety Headquarters on a new single campus. This new campus will also have room for other County agency needs. This will free up both the current Public Safety Training Academy site and half of the County Service Park for alternate uses.
In today’s paper, an article by Ann E. Marimow contains the statement:
County officials have identified nearly 100 acres for a public safety headquarters site at the old National Geographic building on Darnestown Road and an adjacent property that is a warehouse for an online shopping company.
The county would sell the 52 acres where the training academy is located, freeing valuable land at the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center.
The plan would depend on finding locations for pieces of the government services park near the Shady Grove Metro, such as the school bus yard, and must be approved by council members.
The GE Tech Park Special Study Area — which contains the old National Geographic building — comprises a total of 97 acres. Thus, with the 100-acre figure in the post, I’m guessing that the County is proposing to use the entire parcel for this purpose.
At a minimum, I expect that this could have a significant impact on City revenues; should that parcel be used for private development, the City could expect a property tax revenue stream in the future. Should the County develop the property instead, I expect that these revenues would not materialize. Instead, the County would be seeing such a revenue stream from development of the old training facility site near Shady Grove Hospital.