Agreement reached on Ft. Meade office park | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

Announced Wednesday, the agreement is a stop-gap measure intended to advance the project while Army officials and the developer work out final details on a 50-year lease for the property. Officials said they had hoped to have the lease completed by September of last year.

Wednesday's agreement includes details about what the project will look like and what features will be included in the office park, which will be built on 173 acres near Route 175.

The Fort Meade Technology Center, as it is being called, will include 1.7 million square feet of office space, which Trammell Crow will rent to other companies, most likely defense contractors that work with military organizations at Fort Meade. It also will include park areas and shops to support the work force.

The campus will feature "green" buildings that meet standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

It also will include jogging trails and a recreation area, according to a news release.

County planners said the project could accommodate as many as 10,000 of the 22,000 new jobs they're expecting at Fort Meade by 2015. The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Process, or BRAC, will bring 5,700, and growth at the National Security Agency and other organizations at the post will bring the rest.

Construction is expected to begin in early 2009 and the first building could be occupied by 2010, according to a release.

Roads and utilities that support the project will be completed with cooperation between Fort Meade, the state and the county, a news release said.

In the meantime, Army officials and the developer are working on the final lease for the project.

"We're pretty close. We're actually working on the documents now," said Bob Penn, a project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers, the group handling the negotiations. "We're looking to have that lease signed in around 30 to 45 days."

The lease was delayed in part because of a tax issue, he said.

The developer is able to complete the project through an enhanced-use lease, or EUL. With this sort of lease, a mili-tary installation is able to rent surplus land. In return, it doesn't receive cash, but "in-kind services."

In this case, such services include the construction of two 18-hole golf courses and work on fort infrastructure and buildings. If Fort Meade were to lease the land for cash, half of the proceeds would be returned to the Treasury Department.

An enhanced-use lease is a way for the fort to receive as many resources as possible, officials said.

"The services in-kind generated from this ground lease will allow the installation to make predictable investments in our infrastructure and facilities. ... Among other things, we believe this deal will assist Fort Meade in replacing its current golf courses with a new facility that will preserve the revenues the former generated to support youth sports, child development centers, after-school programs and other activities that are essential to taking care of military families," Col. Kenneth O. McCreedy, installation commander at the post, said in a prepared statement.

Buildings are being built over the fort's two old courses.

The lease agreement came under attack from county officials and local business leaders who were worried Trammell Crow would not have to pay local taxes because it is building on land owned by the federal government.

As such, it would have the ability to undercut the rent other office parks charge their tenants. However, the state attorney general ruled Trammell Crow would have to pay fees for services it receives from the county and state, as well as property taxes on new buildings but not the land they are built upon.

And this winter, legislators passed a law that encourages military installations and the municipalities around them, Fort Meade and Anne Arundel County included, to negotiate payments in lieu of taxes. If the county fails to make a good faith effort to do so, it cannot participate in a program that helps revitalize depressed neighborhoods.

This tax issue caused problems and delays in negotiating the lease, Mr. Penn said.

The county has begun the first steps of negotiation payments in place of taxes, said County Executive John R. Leopold.

"It's a matter of equity so that the private contractors who are benefitting from these infrastructure improvements, these road improvements, will pay their fair share," he said.

Mark Corneal, a vice president at Trammell Crow, could not be reached for comment.