The big story in Aspen Hill is that BAE Systems -- presently located at 4115 Aspen Hill Road (also known as 13900 Connecticut Avenue, it's on a huge corner lot) -- will be vacating the premises as of April 2010. Originally built as "Vitro Building #4" back in 1969 or so, this is 230,000 square feet of contiguous office space with LOTS of parking. While the rest of the former Vitro Labs properties here wre either torn down or converted -- with the former Building #1 and lot becoming Home Depot -- this one surviving building will be on the market. Vitro Labs was absorved into BAE Systems, but BAE Systems has now leased brand-new a highly secure office space in the booming Shady Grove office district.
Vitro Labs was once Montgomery County's largest civilian employer, providing jobs to over 5000 people in the mid-1980s, and the many stores in the commerical heart of Aspen Hill have relied for years on walk-in
customers on their lunch hour or doing after-work shopping on the way home. Once BAE vacates the building, unless a new long-term tenant is found, this leaves Aspen Hill as a low-wage suburban center without any real core of high-paying jobs in the neighborhood, if you exclude perhaps 30 office groups of mostly dental and optometry practices in the nerby small office buildings. See also http://www.aspenhillnet.net and the basiour listings of stores, shopping centers, nearby schools, etc. Locally developed and maintained by Thomas Harding.
SOURCE: Thomas Harding
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