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Prince George’s County will continue to be a “bedroom county,” with residents living there but leaving each day for work in other jurisdictions, unless efforts are taken soon to reverse the trend, according to a new study. With roughly 60 percent of its residents leaving the county for work every morning, Prince George’s is home to a fairly well-educated work force that has done little for the county itself.
Instead, those employees have been boosting the economies of counties such as Montgomery and Fairfax, as well as the District of Columbia, while Prince George’s is left behind, researchers at the Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice found.
“We have to find something to generate the right kind of economic development in this county to stop us from being a bedroom county,” said Betty Hewlett, chairwoman of the Prince George’s County Planning Board.
Like other jurisdictions in the Washington region, Prince George’s County has been buoyed by its proximity to Washington during the down economy.
But the county’s employment loss was greater than the region’s during the recession. And even before the economy tanked, total employment in the county grew only 3.9 percent from 2001 to 2007, the study found. The rest of the region grew by 7.2 percent over the same period.
Federal employment is a big part of the reason, according to County Executive Rushern Baker, who told the Maryland Association of Counties earlier this year that the county is home to a quarter of the region’s federal government work force, but only about 4 percent of the region’s federal office space.
Getting GSA to award the county a federal tenant — something county officials have sought unsuccessfully — would go a long way toward helping Prince George’s retain its own residents, officials said, and bait such as Baker’s new economic development incentive fund could help.
“When we did this study, we saw that, in fact, Prince George’s County did not have the same kind of economic development programs and economic incentives as other jurisdictions did,” said Mitchell Horowitz, vice president of Battelle. “It stands out.”
