The Army has abandoned a commitment to turn over 135 acres of unused land at Fort Belvoir for use as a park in southern Fairfax County, county supervisors said Monday.
Local leaders said the transfer of the land would help fix a 600-acre deficit of park space in Fairfax, a need made more critical by the roughly 19,000 jobs slated to move to Belvoir by 2011 under orders of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.
The parcel in question sits on the northwest end of Belvoir’s 800-acre Engineer Proving Ground, a former explosives testing site off Interstate 95 that closed about three decadesago.
Three supervisors proposed at Monday’s board meeting to seek the help of the Northern Virginia congressional delegation to secure the parcel, calling it “urgently needed” in a joint statement.
“This is a pretty important piece of the BRAC puzzle,” said Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald Connolly, who co-sponsored the motion with Mount Vernon District Supervisor Gerald Hyland and Lee District Supervisor Dana Kauffman.
Belvoir spokesman Don Carr said Monday the Army does not have specific plans for the parcel, but does not intend to deliver it to Fairfax County in the near future.
About half of the jobs coming to the base are slated for the proving ground, and the approximately 8,500 workers moving from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are set to relocate close to the plot.
The debate centers on federal legislation passed in 2003 that authorizes the secretary of the Army to turn the land over to the county, though language in that bill does not appear to compel the military to do so. Carr said he is not aware of any such promise.
The bill passed two years before Congress enacted the round of base realignments that included Belvoir, and before the proving ground was targeted to bear much of the job influx.
“The [Engineer Proving Ground] is now being developed for mission purposes, nobody knows what future needs might arise,” Carr said.
