Fort Belvoir’s commander will retire in less than two months, prompting worries that the southern Fairfax County base is losing a key asset in planning for a crush of new workers as a major deadline swiftly approaches.
Col. Brian Lauritzen came to Fort Belvoir shortly before Congress passed a massive round of military base realignments in 2005 that would drop a roughly Pentagon-size work force on the base. He has been widely praised for helping shepherd the facility through the massive transition. His July 2 departure — mandated at the end of his three-year tour — comes at an inconvenient time, as the military and community scramble to meet the 2011 deadline for the relocation.
“It will not be an easy thing for someone to fill his shoes,” said Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose Mount Vernon District encompasses Fort Belvoir. “He’s been a real soldier in terms of taking a very tough mission, and he’s done his level best to accomplish that mission over, at times, overwhelming odds. It’s going to be difficult.”
Since the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure orders, the exact scope and location of the job influx has shifted as local, federal and military officials seek to forge a palatable plan. What began as some 22,000 new workers mostly concentrated on the 800-acre Engineer Proving Ground has become 19,000 jobs more spread out — 6,200 of which don’t yet have a permanent home.
County supervisors and school officials have raised concerns over the lack of federal money allocated to help prevent a traffic nightmare and overloaded south county school system, a debate in which Lauritzen has been heavily involved.
Lauritzen, however, expressed confidence both in the remaining staff with deep knowledge of BRAC, and in the incoming commander, Jerry Blixt of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, one of the agencies headed to Belvoir.
Despite theremaining uncertainties, Lauritzen said he believes the base can meet the 2011 deadline.
“It’s coming down to the wire from an engineering complexity standpoint … can you demolish this facility and pave this road and build this structure in the amount of time,” he said. “It can be physically done. As each day approaches, it becomes that much more of a challenge.”
