The costs of moving thousands of defense jobs to Fort Belvoir and splitting Walter Reed Hospital between Maryland and Virginia have climbed hundreds of millions of dollars since 2005, according to a recent report.
The analysis, issued last week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, detailed a bevy of construction costs that make Base Realignment and Closure far more expensive than earlier anticipated.
Fairfax County’s Fort Belvoir is set to receive 19,000 jobs as part of the nationwide shift of military facilities passed by Congress two years ago. The forecasted cost of moving Department of Defense jobs out of leased space to Fort Belvoir and Fort Lee has doubled since then to nearly $1 billion, according to the report.
The price of building new structures for one of the largest agencies moving to the Fairfax base — the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency — has risen by almost $350 million.
The escalations put a greater squeeze on federal purse strings and could dampen hopes for additional funding to alleviate BRAC’s local burdens on traffic and schools.
“[BRAC] has never been a good thing for us,” said Del. Dave Albo, R-Springfield. “Because they haven’t delivered any money for roads and they haven’t delivered any money for schools. As far as the community goes, there’s nothing good coming out of this.”
The anticipated price tag for closing Walter Reed and sending its functions to Fort Belvoir and Bethesda National Naval Medical Center is now up to more than $1 billion, an increase of $440 million since 2005. That increase, the report said, is “largely because of additional facilities needs,” including a parking structure and a larger-than-anticipated addition to the medical center.
Delays in military funding have also helped drive up the costs of BRAC projects, said Ned Christensen, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s Installation Management Command.
“Uncertainty in the funding stream affects contracting, and that’s expensive,” he said.
The author of the GAO report could not be reached for comment on Monday.
