Amazon’s Met Park opens for business and welcomes the community

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The excitement in Arlington, Virginia, is palpable. The anxiously awaited Phase 1 of Amazon’s HQ2, known as Metropolitan Park, is done and thousands of employees and retail businesses have begun moving in.

Met Park has been four years in the making — constructionwise. The new Amazon headquarters space includes two 22-story towers with more than 2 million square feet of office and collaboration space. There’s also 50,000 thousand square feet of retail space and a 2.5-acre park.

“It’s not only a place for employees, it’s really a place for the entire community to gather,” said Holly Sullivan, vice president of worldwide economic development at Amazon.

No argument from Arlington County Board Chair Christian Dorsey, who sees HQ2 as the hub of a dynamic neighborhood. “It’s really the locus of an emerging community that’s going to be quite special.”

Plus, Dorsey sees numerous benefits for education in the region as a ripple effect from tech sector businesses wanting to be near Amazon and creating a workforce pipeline.

“We’re seeing that with institutions of higher learning, like Virginia Tech, which is this massive investment in the National Landing area that is going to really be, I think, nationally renowned, if not world renowned,” he said.

Other colleges are also looking to develop programs to assist with creating a pipeline of tech workers, which Dorsey described as the beginnings of an ecosystem of higher education programs that have evolved from investments by Amazon.

Sullivan said that the company is particularly proud of the Amazon Web Services Skill Center that will open at HQ2. “Somebody walking down the street who wants to learn something about cloud computing or data science can walk into the AWS Skill Center and learn more about it, and there are actual classes you can ign up for too,” she said, calling the center a great addition to the momentum already building in Arlington.

When Amazon first selected Arlington County as the site for Met Park, Sullivan said the project team listened to the residents, listened to county board members and developed partnerships with many individuals and organizations in the area.

“What it means is it’s going to be a destination for our employees, a great place to live … but also, with all the other development going on — the residential parts of it, the apartments coming up, the retail — you can live, work, play and recreate right here in downtown Arlington,” she said.

Met Park builds on Arlington long-term development plans

As part of the HQ2 development, Amazon committed to investing billions of dollars in the community, creating 25,000 jobs by 2030 and helping expand affordable housing. Already, 8,000 Amazon employees are working at the new offices, Sullivan said.

Dorsey added that thousands of residential units are under construction within walking distance of HQ2, which he said “will provide sorely needed relief for our housing shortage in the region, but also help reduce the upward pressure on prices that we’ve been experiencing throughout the region for decades.”

Arlington is ready for the benefits that the Met Park development will provide, Dorsey said. The county has been planning for these changes for decades, even though its board didn’t realize early on that the changes would involve Amazon and HQ2.

“We’ve laid out the community plan for where the density should go and what amenities would be needed to add value to existing and new neighbors,” he said, adding that Amazon has been “a willing participant in the building of buildings, but also in enhancing the community.”

From its perspective, Amazon considers sustainability and reducing its carbon footprint critical to the development of Met Park and efforts in the surrounding community. The campus’ buildings will be LEED Platinum–certified and “take sustainability to the next level,” Sullivan said. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certifications are the most widely used green building ratings in the world.

Creating a space that provides multiple uses was also a focus. Sullivan pointed out that Met Park has a 700-person meeting space for community events and town halls available to the public by reservation. And for the retail opportunities, “we’ve really tried to choose local, with a focus on minority-based retailers,” she said. (See the list of retailers below.)

Sullivan also expressed excitement about the feel of Met Park. “It has a really cool vibe — lots of conference spaces, lots of gathering spaces on the inside and outside,” she said. And, in addition to the park areas, there are also architectural details that bring the outdoors in, “a lot of green walls, the flora and fauna that are natural to the region, she said.”

Beyond Met Park, there are additional projects underway in the county, Dorsey said. For instance, the county has begun a major renovation of the nearby Crystal City Water Park. As part of that project, as many as nine restaurants have been carefully curated to reflect the diversity of the region, he said.

More to come in Arlington

Sullivan said that the Met Park development has exceeded Amazon’s own expectations. “This headquarters is truly raising the bar, not only with our sustainability but through the partnerships that we developed along the way with nonprofits, the county board, the residents and community members,” she said. “Listening to them and what their vision was helped us as a company raise the bar and really take into account … the diversity and the infrastructure that Arlington County has to offer.”

Next up? Phase 2 of the HQ2 development, Pen Place, which will feature two additional towers and The Helix, an iconic building that will take a few years to build. Phase 2 is currently in the preconstruction phase, with a pause announced in March.

Sullivan said that Amazon wants to understand “how our employees are going to return to the office, so we can also take into account all the infrastructure, the investments that we have done and then hopefully kick that off in a few months.”