The Montgomery County Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the Make Office Vacancy Extinct (MOVE) Grant Program, which will provide office rental grants for eligible businesses that want to move to the county or expand their local space and county businesses looking to increase their existing footprint.
The program, which codifies an existing initiative, aims to eliminate the county’s office vacancy rate by providing a financial incentive to encourage businesses to rent or expand. The county has a 18.1% office vacancy rate, compared to 12.3% in 2019, according to county documents.
The bill was sponsored by councilmembers Evan Glass (D-At-large), Natali Fani-González (D-Dist. 6), Balcombe (D-Dist. 2) and Laurie-Anne Sayles (D-At-large), who are all members of the council’s Economic Development Committee. Co-sponsors include council Vice President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4) and Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7) and councilmember Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5).
“This is incredibly important,” Glass said prior to the vote. “We all know that telework has changed our landscape, and our office vacancy rate is at a record high.”
The MOVE Grant Program was introduced as a pilot program in March 2014 by then-County Executive Ike Leggett (D). However, it was never codified. This bill establishes the program under the law as part of the county’s Economic Development Fund. It also increases the maximum financial incentive that a business could receive from the county from $80,000 to $150,000 by increasing the eligible amount of space. Under the program, a business can receive $8 per square foot of office space.
The revamped program also will allow county businesses to apply for the funding. Under the previous iteration, only businesses looking to move into the county were eligible.
“This is one of the programs that has a strong track record,” Fani-González said prior to Tuesday’s vote. “The [Economic Development] Committee took the opportunity to analyze it and see how we could expand it.”
According to Glass, the Economic Development Committee assessed the county’s real estate portfolio over the past year and found that it could be improved by getting workers back into the office. The committee decided to build off the success of the existing MOVE program.
Between fiscal year 2014 and the end of 2023, the program disbursed more than $5.2 million to 85 businesses, according to a memo from County Executive Marc Elrich (D). The businesses occupied a total of 703,457 square feet of office space.
Funding for the revamped program will come from the county’s Economic Development Fund.