RALEIGH – Federal contracting company Applied Research Associates is taking advantage of corporate moves in north Raleigh to expand and bring its newest acquisition into the fold.

ARA is taking 22,000 square feet of additional space at the Forum office building on Six Forks Road in north Raleigh after agreeing to a multiyear sublease with the building’s anchor tenant, Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions.

Allscripts-Misys has been marketing for sublease much of the 60,000 square feet of space that it had agreed to lease in 2007, when the building opened, because the medical software company shifted its employees and didn’t need the extra space. CB Richard Ellis of Cary is representing Allscripts in its sublease negotiations. Highwoods Properties of Raleigh owns the building.

ARA already occupies the top two floors of the six-story building with about 200 people.

Allen York, Southeast division manager and vice president of ARA, says the expansion was needed to accommodate the division office’s growth in the past two years and to make room for the 45 staff members of Durham-based Virtual Heroes. ARA acquired Virtual Heroes in April.

Jerry Heneghan, CEO of Virtual Heroes, says the company expects to hire 20 additional employees in the next 12 months. “This (expansion) is a result of a successful acquisition,” Heneghan says.

With a bigger studio and an expanded role to help ARA bring new game technologies to the market, Virtual Heroes is poised to go into warp speed.

The company is working with NASA on a multiplayer online learning game that walks players through what the moon, Mars and outer space will look like a few decades from now. “Our expertise is in three core areas – advanced learning technologies, serious games and virtual worlds,” Heneghan says.

Virtual Heroes’ expertise fits nicely with ARA’s future.

ARA has expanded its work with the U.S. Navy and with the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, York says, which is partly responsible for the work increase. For DARPA, Applied Research Associates is into the second year of a four-year, $30 million contract to develop light-weight communication gear for military operations in urban terrains.

Albuquerque, N.M.-based ARA currently has 11 job openings for engineering and software development positions posted on its Web site for the Raleigh office.

In January, ARA was awarded a contract with the U.S. Army’s simulation, training and instrumentation office, or PEO STRI, to provide products and services for soldier training.

Wayne Watkins with the Wake County Economic Development office says the gaming industry is one of the county’s primary focus areas to help and retain companies that may be creating hundreds of jobs in coming years. “With about 33 gaming companies in the area and about 1,200 people employed at these companies, the strength of the cluster is evident,” Watkins says. “Anything we can do to get this sector to expand and create new opportunities is good for the entire community.”

Watkins’ group helps brand gaming companies in the marketing materials recruiters take to trade shows across the country. “We really see this as a bricks and mortar play,” Watkins says.

ARA employs about 1,200 across the country and generated about $200 million in revenue in 2008.

Ford Griswold of CB Richard Ellis in Cary represented ARA, and Heath Chapman, also of CB Richard Ellis, represented Allscripts-Misys in the lease negotiations.