Crusading for Slowed Building
Randall W. Byrnes volunteered to undertake an almost impossible mission after being elected president of the Northern Virginia chapter of the National Association of Industrial & Office Parks.</br></br>For several months now, Byrnes has been trying to get developers of big commercial projects in Northern Virginia to slow the pace of construction. Northern Virginia simply doesn't need as much office space as developers have been producing, Byrnes has been telling members of NOVA/NAIOP. Convincing builders that he's right hasn't been easy, however. Few are willing to let the bandwagon pass them by. "Let's face it, it's not fun to be in the development business and not build," Byrnes quipped in a recent interview.</br></br>He is serious, nonetheless, about the need to adhere more closely to the supply-demand rule. Unless developers do just that, Byrnes warns, this market could become overbuilt as so many others have. Indeed, the local market may be undergoing a structural change and not a cyclical one, he said.</br></br>Byrnes' warnings can't be dismissed simply as part of another no-growth crusade by Northern Virginia politicians and taxpayers. He is, after all, senior vice president and regional manager for Spaulding & Slye, a leading investment builder headquartered in Boston. Credibility, then, should not be a drawback to his argument against overbuilding.</br></br>"There is a potential here for a very real and serious overcapacity problem," he warned after the metropolitan Washington Council of Governments released a report last week showing a big surge in commercial construction indicators.