Fairfax County supervisors on Monday urged the Army to use 70 acres of federal warehouse space in Springfield, and not an Alexandria property, as offices for thousands of incoming workers in the next four years.
The destination of the 6,200 Washington Headquarters Services workers — part of a larger 19,000-strong relocation to Fort Belvoir by 2011 — remains in flux as military and local officials wrangle over their placement.
The move is mandated under Congress’ Base Realignment and Closure orders of 2005.
Fairfax supervisors have long said the best place for the services jobs is the Springfield site, which is easily accessible to Metro and Virginia Railway Express stations.
Army officials, however, also are considering an Alexandria site on Eisenhower Avenue called the Victory Center as a future home for the jobs.
The Victory Center is farther away from public transportation, hindered by nearby road construction and does not meet the military’s standards for protection “because of its narrow shape and similarly smaller size,” according to a letter to be sent from the county to the Army.
But Joseph Delogu, managing director of District commercial real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle, which owns the Victory Center, said the building is beingrenovated to meet Army standards.
“It is an excellent site as it relates to military requirements,” he said.
As a compromise, the Board of Supervisors has suggested a “hybrid” approach that would spread the workers across both sites.
