Three expanding companies have signed leases for new space at the Discovery District, bolstering the growing tech and defense node near the University of Maryland, College Park.
Corporate Office Properties Trust (NYSE:COPT) has wrapped up moving three tenants into the College Park development, bringing yet more jobs to the 60-acre portion where it has already built 415,000 square feet of office and has room for 1.2 million more.
The new leases include:
- Cybersecurity firm Cybrary Inc. has taken 28,000 square feet at 4600 River Road, which will serve as its headquarters, moving from nearby 5801 University Research Court. Cybrary has 100 employees and plans to expand its workforce to 228, thanks in part to a $1 million economic development loan from Prince George's County.
- Colorado Springs nonprofit Catalyst Campus, which brings small businesses, academia, and government together to solve problems in the aerospace and defense industry, is taking 27,000 square feet of space at 5801 University Research Court, including Cybrary's old space. It will bring 50 jobs to the office, its first in Maryland.
- Phishing and email security company Inky is tripling the size of its existing lease at 5825 University Research Court, bringing it to 17,000 square feet.
"It's really nice to be in this area where we have a lot of similar clientele as other tenants and there's so much development happening," Cybrary co-founder Ralph Sita said. "It's got everything you could want."
COPT's leasing specialist Greg Prossner is working with Danny Sheridan of JLL to market COPT's newest Discovery District holdings for lease. The company is finding the University of Maryland's own growing interest in research has set the tone for more companies to look in the area, Prossner said.
The development already hosts offices of some big federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and is piggybacking on UMd.'s own $1.1 billion annual research budget.
Catalyst's new office there will include sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, space for its classified work with the military. But it also has more of an open-office setting and encourages a casual atmosphere intended to soften what can at other times be rigid military-business interactions, said Catalyst CEO Patrick Barrett.
"Our initial footprint in Discovery District is focused just as a software factory, but our goal is to expand beyond that," Barrett said in an interview, adding the proximity to military leadership and a major university was a must in the nonprofit's search. "We've had a vision of bringing to Maryland more of what we do."
Discovery District is serving the university by helping attract more of these kind of corporate interactions, said Ken Ulman, who is both chief strategy officer for economic development at the University of Maryland College Park Foundation and president of Terrapin Development Company LLC, a joint venture between University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland College Park Foundation. Over the past decade, those interactions have increased opportunities for staff at the university and its 41,000 students, he added.
There are already about 7,000 jobs in the Discovery District, and additional office space and development will bring more. To Ulman, it replicates the university-anchored innovation hub that has been a focal point for the growth of other major cities around the country such as Austin, Boston and Pittsburgh.
Terrapin also recently struck a deal with Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE: BDN) of Philadelphia to develop a $300 million, mixed-use project on a 5-acre parcel elsewhere in the development, including 300,000 square feet of office space.
"We see thousands of new jobs in this district as it's fully built-out," Ulman said. "It's creating a new place of innovation for our school beyond a traditional office park."
