Mark Center Building

Mark Center Buildings

The Mark Center Building in Alexandria, Virginia, is the new location for the Washington Headquarters Services (WHS) of the United States Department of Defense and a number of other DoD agencies. The name of the site refers to the "Mark Center" commercial property in which it is located, at the intersection of Seminary Road and Beauregard Street at the Interstate 395 interchange.[1] Sixteen acres of the site were sold to the federal government and are administratively considered part of Fort Belvoir.[2]

The site was selected in September 2008 as a result of the 2005 round of Base Realignment and Closures, and is also referred to as BRAC-133.[3] This BRAC mandated a move of many DoD offices from leased office space to secure sites that could meet DoD's high anti-terrorism security standards. (Which, as it turns out, the building does not.)

Federal employees began moving to the center in August 2012, with the move scheduled to be complete by January 2013.[4] The project has been controversial in the region because of potential traffic impacts: many of the approximately 6,500 employees who will be relocated to the site were formerly located in Metro-accessible locations such as Crystal City, Virginia, and office buildings in Washington, D.C., itself, but they will now need to commute by car or bus to the new site via a highway that already handles 200,000 vehicles per day.[5][6] Further, a New York Times article [7] claims it is vulnerable to a truck bomb attack from adjacent roadways. A Reuters article [8] cites a Corp of Engineers study on its vulnerability.

Location:38°49′49″N 77°06′59″W / 38.8303°N 77.1163°W

References

  1. ↑ http://alexandriava.gov/BRAC
  2. ↑ http://www.belvoirnewvision.com/files/FINAL_BRAC133_Website_Collateral%5B1%5D.pdf
  3. ↑ http://www.alexecon.org/about-alexandria/base-realignment-a-closure-brac/brac133.html
  4. ↑ http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/commuting/va-brac-task-force-to-manage-traffic-as-mark-center-opens/2011/08/08/gIQALMF92I_story.html
  5. ↑ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-politics/post/va-congressmen-criticize-mark-center-occupancy-plan/2011/07/14/gIQAXCunEI_blog.html
  6. ↑ http://www.tbd.com/articles/2011/04/report-pentagon-brac-study-used-faulty-data-to-estimate-mark-center-relocation-59125.html
  7. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/realestate/commercial/a-defense-dept-complex-in-virginia-raises-safety-concerns.html
  8. ↑ http://us.mobile.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE73I6KK20110420?irpc=932

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