Not necessarily. The Department of Defense, for example, has been making a concerted push over the last few years to disperse a bunch of offices that used to all be clustered in the D.C. metro area out across the country at large. As a result, neighborhoods in Northern Virginia like Pentagon City and Crystal City that used to be nothing but endless blocks of government-leased office space have started shifting towards more high-end residential development and the lifestyle businesses that high-end residential development attracts -- trendy restaurants and bars and so forth.
This has led to the somewhat bizarre sight of Crystal City, which was built in the '60s as a sort of dystopian Brutalist Disneyworld of giant, blank office towers connected by a warren of underground tunnels, suddenly looming down disapprovingly on outdoor concerts and tapas joints.
If you were the newly confirmed head of the Fish and Wildlife Service would you want to stay in some dingy, 30 year old office building, or build a brand new office farther out from the city?
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2015/0...
5 of the 6 highest average income counties in the US are in the suburbs and exurbs around Washington DC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_countie...
"People telecommute. People move into the city or into faux-urban areas that are friendlier to pedestrians, that aren’t barnacled on a highway. Younger generations don’t want to be stranded in a “Dilbert” cartoon. They want cozy nooks and nap spaces, walkable commutes, the tastes and conveniences of the city."
That's funny because Dilbert now almost exclusively deals with tech. This is from the Dilbert's author's blog http://scottadams-tttt.tumblr.com/post/124285032091/top-tech...
The current administration is big on it, partly for office space savings, partly to apologize for the paycut most government workers take over the private sector (I suspect, anyhow).
In practice, it looks a lot like hot desking, because you have to show up in the office once a week, and teleworkers usually end up sharing a desk amongst themselves. It allows workers in the DC area to live in affordable West Virginia :D or Fredricksburg or wherever and not kill themselves commuting
> Last year, federal agencies vacated 7,315 buildings, abandoning 47 million square feet of office and warehouse space, Federal News Radio says.
So the amount of vacant space in the area tripled last year, going from 24 million SQFT to 71.5 million SQFT?
---
> Another 1 million square feet of office space will flow onto the market over the next seven years, as Marriott International moves out of its Bethesda office park
Where are these companies moving to? Are they moving out of these office parks and into city centers? This article only tells half of the story.
---
> With its space-hungry bureaucracies and contractors, Washington became a colossal hive of office parks, especially during years of government expansion — most recently the post-Sept. 11, 2001 period, when the military ramped up and the national-security apparatus spread along the Dulles Corridor.
> The U.S. government hasn’t signed any major leases this year, ... but it maintains 98 million square feet in the District alone (411 million if you throw in Maryland and Virginia).
Is the government portion of this solely from governmental contraction and shrinking of programs?