Electronics lab buyer seeks suitor

A data center management company is buying one of Lockheed Martin’s former lab facilities and looking for a client.

T-Rex Capital, based in Boca Raton, Fla., has a purchase agreement with Lockheed Martin for an electronics lab at 9220 Godwin Drive near Manassas.

The company, which owns and manages data centers across the country, is aggressively marketing the project, called T-Rex Technology Center at Manassas.

“We’ve talked to almost everybody who would need a mission critical facility in the Washington, D.C., area and the whole of Virginia,” said Jim Coakley, senior vice president of T-Rex.

Several companies have expressed serious interest in the facility but no one has signed on. T-Rex has shown the site to about 35 prospective buyers over the last few months and it was suitable for five of them, Coakley said.

The possible buyers include government agencies, companies looking to duplicate their corporate data holdings and biotechnology businesses, although the building is not designed for specimen preparation, or wet lab work.

The 330,000-square-foot building is a former IBM facility that includes about 64,000 square feet of office space, said Ken Born, senior director of Cushman Wakefield, who is representing Lockheed Martin in the sale.

The building’s main selling point is its security features.

It sits back on 116 acres and has security gates and badge access-only areas. Portions of the building are made to contain top secret information, where radio frequency is limited and no outsiders can listen or see what’s happening inside.

It once had “SCIF,” or sensitive compartmented information facility, areas designating a high level of security that could be easily put back in place, Coakley said.

Lockheed Martin is still using the lab but is in the process of vacating it, said spokesman Fred Henney.

The company, which designs submarine systems for the U.S. Navy at its Manassas site, has nearly completed a $5 million laboratory that will combine all of its labs, once spread across several buildings.

The site, built by IBM, is surrounded by land still owned by the company, which is adjacent to the [email protected] William high-tech business park.

Coakley said he expects the sale to be complete by the end of July.