Fairfax County officials forecast a need for as much as 15 million square feet of office space to house contractors and services that will follow military jobs to Fort Belvoir, one of the brightest spots in the Base Closure and Realignment Commission’s decision to move jobs to Fort Belvoir.
The figure comes from the county’s assumption that for each of the some 22,000 workers headed to Belvoir by 2011 as a result of BRAC, three jobs will be created outside of the base to support it. And each of those workers will require about 225 square feet of commercial space, according to Fairfax County Economic Development Authority Chief Executive Officer Jerry Gordon.
If the prediction holds, it would mean a wave of employees descending on southern Fairfax County on top of the massive influx mandated by the federal government in 2005. Many of those jobs are expected to settle in Springfield, an area now marked by an aging patchwork of development that the county hopes to revitalize.
“There will have to be a lot of new construction that is not on the books yet to accommodate this,” Gordon said. “Of course, that’s good for the county.”
Commercial tax dollars are now, in large part, propping up the county’s budget in a stagnating housing market, though Fairfax County’s executive has warned that source of revenue also could shrink in coming years. New office construction as a result of BRAC, officials hope, would strengthen that revenue stream.
“Typically, commercial [space] brings in more [revenue] than the services that have to be provided,” Lee District Supervisor Dana Kauffman said. “If somebody is commuting from Prince William County to work in office space in Springfield, Prince William has to educate the kids, we get the revenue from the office space, and their lunch money.”
Belvoir is the county’s largest employer, and it should double in population under BRAC.
Public discussion on the move has remained overwhelmingly negative so far, with county supervisors decrying what they consider an unresponsive military imposing a traffic crisis on southern Fairfax.
