Retail Strategist

Having kept one of closest watches on the region’s past 12 years of business trends, WBJ publisher Alex Orfinger speaks to recent NoVa business booms—and their potential aftermath.

By Forrest Glenn Spencer / Photography by Seth Freeman

Alex Orfinger is the publisher of the Washington Business Journal, where he started at the time of the longterm economic boom that is ongoing in our region. Orfinger, who previously served at sister publications in Dallas and Atlanta, was born in New York and holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Vassar College. He later earned his master’s in international affairs from Georgetown University, then joined the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 1991.

Returning to Washington, D.C., five years later, he has since turned the Washington Business Journal into the primary chronicler of our area’s economic growth and prosperity. Through his guidance and leadership, Alex Orfinger created one of the most respected business newspapers in the country. His story is our story.

What you have witnessed, what’s transpired, regarding the state of business in Northern Virginia?
I started at the Washington Business Journal in 1996, almost 12 years ago. When I look back, it was almost the genesis of the most recent technology boom. That’s when Northern Virginia really began to identify itself as a center for innovative technology, separate from the Pentagon that was spawning all types of startup businesses, which grew into fairly substantial technology companies, with AOL being the highlight.

But the landscape is very different than it was 12 years ago, and we are certainly looked upon throughout the country as one of the top centers for innovation and for business.

Who’s to be congratulated for that? Was it happenstance, or was it good government?
I think there was a great confluence of many factors: the changes in government procurement policies that led to a significant amount of outsourcing of businesses in the 1990s, a great environment for business created by governments and a great educational system. Greater Washington became a good place for people to come who were highly educated and highly motivated.

Who are the stars, the companies today in Northern Virginia that you are impressed by?
That’s a great question. When you look down our list of companies, I tend to look at fast-growing businesses, because it’s easier for us to look at the great, large businesses in the region, like Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Marriott—those are great companies—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—who have workforces that number in the thousands—Booz Allen, BearingPoint.

But I think the fun companies to look at, and the companies that will make their mark down the line in terms of hiring people, are the fast-growing companies, which is anybody from an XM Satellite in D.C. to companies like Celerity, MicroStrategy, Comstock Homes in Reston, Hire-Strategy also in Reston. They have grown rather quickly the last couple of years. There is Braxis, a fast-growing company in McLean that’s making its mark in the government contracting business. Orbital Technologies has been in the news a lot.

There are dozens of companies. It’s hard for me as a publisher of a newspaper that tries to represent so many of the businesses throughout the region to point to individual companies. There are dozens and dozens of companies in the medium-sized, small-business niche that really we should be focusing on because they are the ones that will grow into the AOL’s, the MicroStrategy’s, the Booz Allens and hire a lot of people and create the wealth in the region.

What are the dangers of an economic slowdown?
Transportation, education and affordable housing would be the top three that come to mind. Transportation: Businesses are facing increased costs of getting their products and services around the region—that’s number one—and for their employees to have easy access to their offices.

It’s unfortunate that we have employees who have to commute and that we have some of the largest commutes in the nation, which is tied into the issue in creating opportunities for affordable workforce housing so people can work closer to their homes. It’s not about affordable housing for the lowest-paid employees on staff, but when you think average workers, middle managers in a company, their ability to live 30 minutes from their business, say in Arlington, it’s really a challenge.

It’s an issue we need to tackle as a region: How are we going to create transportation opportunities for our employees, or how are we going to create new places for businesses to grow and expand as close as where people are living?

Are we on a clock where we may lose the momentum unless we change?
It’s a slow-moving train. I hate using that analogy, but the forecasts are, I believe, that there will be a million more people here by 2020. We’re fortunate as a region that we are a magnet for people from all over the country and all over the world—that people want to live, work and play in greater Washington. It’s a great place to do business and to live; it’s attracting people. If we have exactly the same infrastructure now in 15 years then we may destroy that great place to live.

Political, business and civic leaders need to be aggressive and take some leadership and say, ‘We need to get certain things done. We need to get the rail to Dulles done. We need to get other transportation initiatives deep into the planning and get them done. We need to be willing to take the initiative to make these things to happen.’

When we lose an AOL, we’re still strong, as an economic region.

We do have a large, integrated, local economy that’s not dependent upon one particular industry. We do have a lot of flexibility. So when we lose these companies, it doesn’t necessarily cause a material impact.

Clearly, I think we have great pride for ourselves as a region in having some of these businesses headquartered here, but what we want is to have the lowest unemployment rate, to continue to add jobs, to be this job machine that we have been for the last 10 years where we’ve been adding jobs. Other regions across the country have been seeing slowdown in their job growth, or even negative job growth, but we have seen positive job growth.

What changes did you implement at the Business Journal back in 1996?
Back in the early ‘90s we were really a news organization that focused predominately on the real estate community. But our coverage now is much more diversified. We have award-winning technology coverage, great venture capital coverage; we continue real estate, obviously, biotechnology, federal government contracting, hospitality and retail. When you look through the pages of our paper it really does represent what the region’s businesses care about.

Number two: One of the central tenets of the Business Journal is to be a force and pull the business community together and create a community, a center for the business community to feel a part of. That wasn’t part of our initial mission. There are regional business organizations. We thought we could be one of those regional business groups. We saw ourselves as a paper for the business community. We wanted them to see their names and their pictures, names of their competitors and friends in the pages of our newspaper.

Newspapers have lost subscribers due to the Internet. How about the Business Journal?
We have seen exactly the opposite. 2007 was the fastest year of circulation growth. We grew by over three and a half percent. It was our fourth consecutive year in our paid circulation. We have seen great increases in our web operation. We saw a nearly 50-percent increase in our web traffic last year. Our parent company owns 41 papers like this around the country, and it’s the same story: three-percent growth nationally in readership.

Any recommendation to the leaders of our region?
If I were to make recommendations to our local business and government leaders it would be to make sure we continue creating and fostering the type of environment that is conducive in starting up and growing in the region, and in Northern Virginia in particular.

(June/July 2008)

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