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AOL-Warner Split Not Traumatic for Industry

DULLES, VA-A recently signed Raytheon sublease is helping Northern Virginia absorb the declining fortunes of AOL.

By Erika Morphy | Updated on May 28, 2009

DULLES, VA-After announcing it would more than a year ago, Time Warner is officially spinning off its struggling AOL operations. For the tech industry, of course, this is a symbolic moment: once a pioneer in the early consumerization of the Internet, AOL has now been kicked to the curb. Fortunately for the real estate community, the AOL story is not as dramatic.

To be sure, AOL’s declining fortunes was a blow to Northern Virginia’s tech real estate development. Northern Virginia has traditionally been home to the defense contractor community; 10 years ago it was taken for granted that next gen tech development – and the accompanying real estate necessary to accommodate it – would grow up alongside these old-school IT contractors. One only had to look to AOL’s former Pacific Corporate Park headquarters here — a sprawling multi-complex operation encompassing more than 600,000 square feet — to understand the excitement.

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