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Long & Foster building set to open
It's hard to miss Long & Foster's new headquarters, and the grandeur of the five-story brick building in Chantilly has made it the buzz of western Fairfax County and the local real estate community.After outgrowing its headquarters in Fairfax City, the privately owned real estate company began to look for a new place to house the 300 employees who support its agents and affiliate businesses.
Executives looked in several places, including Fairfax City, but eventually settled on the 39-acre campus just off Route 28 and near the growing Westfields Business Park.
“I'm glad we settled on this location,” Wesley Foster, founder and chairman of the company, said as he stood in the ornate lobby of the new building on May 12.
He cracked a huge smile when he started talking about the move.
Foster, a McLean resident, began the company in 1968 with Henry Long. Foster was in charge of the company's residential real estate business, and Long oversaw the commercial business.
The company now has offices across the East Coast and comprises four businesses: real estate, Prosperity Mortgage, settlement services and insurance agency. Its sales volume and equivalents in 2007 totaled $61 billion.
Foster took out his glasses and inspected the wood on the lobby mezzanine and talked about the artwork that will hang on the walls of the building – paintings of historic Washington, D.C., by Peter Waddell, an artist-in-residence at the Tudor Place in Georgetown.
Foster chose the paintings because they are consistent with the building's Williamsburg style of architecture, he said.
The building is covered with ,565,000 oversized handmade bricks and 180,000 molded accent bricks of the Williamsburg style.
Carol Hawn, a member of the local land use committee, said she has heard good comments about the architecture of the building. “I think it fits well into that area.”
“Now we need to get [the building] leased,” Foster said, chuckling.
The first two floors of the 287,000-square-foot building – about 100,000 square feet – will be rented out.
The entire campus is zoned for more than 1 million square feet of office space and two hotels.
Foster said his first goal for the company is, “to be ethical and honest to customers, as always.”
His second: to get through the recession and aim for a modest amount of growth.
The company suffered a tough first quarter, but things are looking better for May after sales increased and costs were cut, Foster said.
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