ExxonMobil leaving Fairfax County – along with 2,100 jobs

ExxonMobil’s Merrifield campus

ExxonMobil will close its 118-campus in Merrifield, the company announced June 6, and will relocate that operation to Houston, beginning in early 2014. That means a loss of 2,100 jobs for Fairfax County.

That complex, which is owned by Exxon Mobil, housed the offices of ExxonMobil’s Refining and Supply Co., ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co., and ExxonMobil Fuels, Lubricants and Specialties Marketing Co. The move is part of the company’s plan to consolidate more of its workforce in its new campus under construction in Houston.

“We’re disappointed ExxonMobil is leaving,” Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chair Sharon S. Bulova told the Washington Post. “They’ve been a great corporate neighbor.” She said the company is actively seeking a new tenant and doesn’t expect the building to remain vacant for long.

The Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce “is saddened by the news that ExxonMobil has decided to move its operations and such a large number of employees out of Fairfax County,” says chamber President and CEO Jim Corcoran. “The company’s contributions to the Northern Virginia business community—and community at large—are many, and it will leave behind a legacy of great corporate citizenship.”

Corcoran says he hopes “the company still continues to invest in the community many of its employees have called home for so many years.” He notes “companies exiting Fairfax County occur much more infrequently than companies moving into the county.”

“Exxon
Mobil, and Mobil before the merger, has been a major employer in Fairfax County
and an excellent corporate citizen, so its departure will be a big loss but not
devastating because this is an economy with more than 600,000 jobs,” says
Gerald Gordon, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. 

“There
could be a number of good uses—corporate, government, and institutional—for the
ExxonMobil site, and we will work to find another excellent employer for the
site,” he says.