A lone government agency that occupies part of a cluster of General Services Administration warehouses in Springfield is stonewalling efforts for the potential relocation of 6,200 military jobs, two Fairfax County supervisors have been told.
The GSA’s tenant, which has not been publicly identified, has been unresponsive to overtures to help relocate it from the 70-acre site, according to Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity and Lee District Supervisor Jeff McKay.
“There’s basically an agency there that thinks they have the political clout to just not answer to anyone,” McKay said.
Herrity and McKay, as well as other supervisors and officials, want to use the grounds to house the thousands of Washington Headquarters Services workers mandated to head to Fort Belvoir by 2011 as part of Base Realignment and Closur orders. The rest of the 19,000 jobs moving to the area have firmdestinations.
The GSA site is one of three contenders for the 6,200 jobs, competing with two privately owned facilities in Alexandria. Supervisors favor the parcel because it is close to mass transit and could help diffuse major traffic congestion expected to be brought on by the BRAC influx.
They also look to it as a catalyst to spur economic development in Springfield.
The military is expected to narrow the list to two finalists in August.
GSA spokesman Michael McGill disputed the claims of a stonewalling tenant.
“I don’t believe that’s true,” he said. “We need guidance from the Army as to what they intend to do.”
Herrity worried the impasse could eliminate the GSA site as a candidate for the jobs.
“It would be a shame for the whole BRAC process to be poisoned by this one agency’s failure to respond,” he said.
The Washington Headquarters Services, a support agency within the Department of Defense, was originally slated to move to Belvoir’s 800-acre Engineer Proving Ground, but that destination was reconsidered after local officials protested the traffic burden the cluster of workers would impose.
Any new site that accepts the influx would need to formally become part of Fort Belvoir.
