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Springfield site a BRAC favorite
Of the three potential sites for the relocation of 6,200 Washington Headquarters Services employees, the clear favorite for the Department of Defense is the General Services Administration Warehouses site in Springfield, local politicians say.
The only thing holding DOD officials back from making a final decision is whether the installation can be ready by the September 2011 deadline, area leaders said after a recent meeting with representatives of the federal agencies.
Other proposed locations for consideration include the Mark Center and the Victory Center, both in the City of Alexandria.
Seeing that the owners of those locations have representatives actively talking with the DOD, county Supervisors Jeff McKay (D-Lee) and Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) joined U.S. Reps. Tom Davis (R-11th) and Jim Moran (D-8th) in becoming de-facto spokesmen for the warehouses.
“WHS will be the anchor tenant that revitalizes Springfield,” Herrity said. “It's a win-win. The Army has room to grow on the space, the GSA gets rid of dilapidated warehouses and the site meets setback requirements, which none of the other sites do.”
In a meeting held last week at the site, Kenneth Easton, assistant secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment, reportedly told the group that he worried the site would not be ready by 2011.
Last year Congress ordered the Army to conduct a study of the GSA location outlining the feasibility of moving out tenants and thousands of patent records, tearing down the warehouses, rebuilding new structures and moving in WHS employees.
The study said it would take six months to move tenants from the space, a vital time span in determining whether to use the GSA site or not. Also in the study, given a six-month move-out period, only 3,000 employees could work at the location by 2011.
Lurita Doan, GSA administrator, reportedly agreed at the meeting that the agency will conduct a more accurate assessment of a tenant relocation timeline and share that information with the county in two weeks.
“We'll take the timeline they give us and shorten it by finding other warehouse space for [tenant] relocation,” McKay said.
The Alexandria properties can meet the construction deadline, the reason for their being in consideration. However, owners of the Victory Center may not sell the property to the Army, a key requirement, and the Mark Center is four miles away from the nearest Metro station.
The GSA site is less than a mile from a Metro station and is near Interstate 95 and Fort Belvoir. Just as important, the land GSA sits on would be turned over to the Army, free of charge, by an act of Congress.
But if the GSA site is chosen and it turns out the deadline won't be met, the Army may be forced to put WHS employees in temporary trailers on Fort Belvoir until construction is complete.
The law mandating the base realignment “doesn't say the buildings have to be built in order to meet the deadline,” said Belvoir spokesman Don Carr, who said the law only says employees have to be working on Belvoir property by that time.
“It means that X number of jobs get moved to temporary facilities at Belvoir, until buildings are complete,” Carr said.
That approach, Moran said, “is nonsense. I think that's nuts. [The employees] should stay where they are in leased Crystal City buildings for an undetermined period of time until construction at the warehouses is complete.”
As for meeting the base realignment deadline, Moran said it was unimportant, since no penalty awaits the Army if construction is incomplete by Sept. 15, 2011.
“As far as I'm concerned,” Moran said, “that deadline is nonexistent.”
“Even still, the Army follows the law,” Carr said.
The Corps of Engineers is conducting environmental analyses of the three sites in consideration. Those will be completed in June, at which time the Army is slated to make a formal decision on the WHS location.
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