Module · Relevant market geography

Market Map

A disparity study stands or falls on the market it measures. The City's 2021 study drew Frederick's market as the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area, extending the radius from Frederick zip codes until at least 75% of prime award dollars fell inside the line. The map shows that footprint, county by county, with Frederick County in gold and the City of Frederick marked.

The 2021 market area: the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington CSA

Frederick County, MD in gold; the Washington and Baltimore metro areas and the adjacent CSA components shaded. Hover any county for its place in the market.

Washington-Baltimore-Arlington CSA

Frederick County, MD (home county)

Washington metro (CBSA 47900)

Baltimore metro (CBSA 12580)

Adjacent CSA components

Source: Market definition: the City's 2021 study (Griffin & Strong, P.C.), which drew the market to capture at least 75% of prime award dollars by radius from Frederick zip codes. County set drawn from the OMB delineation of CSA 548: the Washington (CBSA 47900) and Baltimore (CBSA 12580) metro areas plus the adjacent Hagerstown-Martinsburg, Chambersburg-Waynesboro, and California-Lexington Park components. The CSA's outlying components toward Winchester, VA and the mid-Eastern Shore are part of the full CSA but are not shaded here. Boundaries from U.S. Census cartographic files.

How the 2021 line was drawn

The City's 2021 study drew its market by dollars, not by convenience. Starting from Frederick zip codes, the study extended the radius outward until at least 75% of the City's prime award dollars over FY2014 through FY2018 fell inside the line. The footprint that satisfied that test was the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington Combined Statistical Area: the two-metro region running from the Blue Ridge to the Chesapeake, with Frederick sitting on its northwestern edge.

The market area is a legal and statistical choice, not a formality. It defines whose availability counts in every disparity ratio that follows. Draw the line too tightly around Frederick and minority availability reads low; draw it out to the full Washington metro and it more than doubles. Neither number is wrong. The question is which geography the City's contracting dollars actually reach, and that is an evidence question.

What a 2026 retest does

A market area is re-earned each study, not inherited. The update re-runs the 2021 test on the new five-fiscal-year window: geocode the vendors who bid and the vendors who won, weight them by dollars, and check what share of prime award dollars each candidate geography captures. Three outcomes are possible: the CSA line holds, it tightens because spend concentrated closer to home, or it shifts because the vendor pool moved. The retest should look at bidders as well as awardees, so the market reflects who competes for the City's work and not only who wins it.

In the full study

The retest is dollar-weighted and runs on the City's own records: bidder lists, vendor files, and award data for the five most recent fiscal years. The study period straddles the City's January 2026 move from IonWave to OpenGov, so the vendor-location file has to be assembled from both systems before the capture test can run. That is a data-collection task to plan for, not a reason to inherit the old line.

Market definition and limits

The availability ladder: three geographies, three answers

Geography rung	Employer firms	Minority-owned	Women-owned
Frederick County, MD (county rung)	5,298	15.3%	20.3%
Frederick + Montgomery two-county (metro-division proxy)	26,505	31.7%	23.4%
Washington metro (CBSA 47900)	113,780	37.2%	25.4%

HSG-computed preliminary reads from the U.S. Census Annual Business Survey 2022, employer firms, all sectors. Shares are group firms over total employer firms at each geography, the same base HSG published for Fairfax; suppressed cells are treated as unknown, never zero; group categories overlap and never sum. ABS does not publish the Frederick-Gaithersburg-Rockville metro division directly, so the two-county rung is a Frederick plus Montgomery sum and approximate. These are availability signals for scoping, not study findings; the study's availability measure is built from the City's own bidder and vendor records.

Why the rung matters

Minority availability more than doubles between the county rung and the Washington metro rung. The geography choice is outcome-determinative, which is exactly why it cannot be chosen for a preferred result.

Neither rung is the right answer by default. The county understates the market if Frederick's dollars flow down the I-270 corridor, and the full metro overstates it if they do not. The 2021 study answered with evidence: the CSA captured at least 75% of prime award dollars. The update should re-earn that answer on fresh data, and report availability at more than one rung so readers can see how much the choice moves the result.

Current availability signals

A design question the RFP should force

Which universe of firms belongs in the denominator, and for which band of the City's spending?

Frederick County holds 5,298 employer firms and roughly 25,500 nonemployer firms, and the nonemployer universe is far more diverse on every measured axis: 35.29% minority-owned against 15.35%, 43.14% women-owned against 20.29%, 16.47% Black-owned against 3.40%. A study that counts only employer firms writes most Black-owned and women-owned businesses in the county out of the denominator before the analysis starts.

Band by band, not one-size-fits-all

The answer should differ by procurement band. For the City's Small Business Reserve band, purchases from $10,000 to $49,999.99, sole proprietors genuinely compete, and a nonemployer-inclusive denominator is defensible. For large construction primes, capacity screens matter and an employer-firm base is closer to right. The 2021 study built its availability from bidder lists and vendor records; the update should make the denominator choice explicit, band by band, and show the sensitivity both ways.

Employer vs. nonemployer universe, Frederick County, MD

Ownership	Employer firms5,298 firms	Nonemployer firms~25,500 firms
Minority-owned	15.3%	35.3%
Women-owned	20.3%	43.1%
Black-owned	3.4%	16.5%

Source: U.S. Census ABS 2022 Company Summary (employer firms) and Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics 2022 (NES-D, Census-rounded counts), Frederick County, MD, all sectors. HSG preliminary computation on the total-firm base; suppressed cells treated as unknown, never zero. Signals for scoping, not study findings.