Fort Belvoir sat in the shadow of a massive, federally mandated worker influx in 2006, a year characterized by pressured planning, fiscal wrangling and an overall lack of real transportation solutions.
Some 22,000 new military jobs are slated to arrive at Fort Belvoir by 2011, part of a broad reorganization of U.S. military installations known as Base Realignment and Closure. While the 2005 order will no doubt spur development and investment in the less-developed southern part of Fairfax County, the inadequacy of transportation infrastructure — and lack of dollars to fund the improvements needed to support the shift of workers — has created a planning nightmare.
Estimates for how much BRAC-necessitated upgrades to the area’s road system will cost vary wildly, depending on the source. Some have estimated about $600 million. Others say revamping the already overtaxed transportation network will cost upward of $1 billion. Only a small fraction of that funding has been identified at this point.
“I think a lot of us sort of hold our breath that we’re going to find a way to make it work,” Mount Vernon District Supervisor Gerald Hyland told The Examiner in May.
How the realignment likely will shape up also became more apparent this year, when the Army announced its preference to locate about 18,000 of the workers on the 800-acre Engineer Proving Ground, a former explosives testing site that sits north of the main base off Interstate 95. The decision ran counter to the wishes of local officials, who wanted the jobs to be more spread out, and reinforced a widespread notion that the Army just wasn’t listening to county leaders.
And 2006 wrapped up with a slight plot twist. The Army — responding to pressure from congressmen and county supervisors — reversed course on the location of the proposed Army museum. The museum was planned for the proving ground, but will now be located on the larger main post.
