As closure looms, work on new JFCOM facility goes on

NORFOLK

What if they built a nice new multimillion-dollar office building and nobody showed up to work there?

That's one of the many unanswered questions left in the wake of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' decision, announced last month, to close the Joint Forces Command.

Even as the Defense Department goes about drawing up a plan to shutter the Norfolk-based military command, work is proceeding on a new headquarters building for JFCOM at Norfolk Naval Station.

Congress appropriated $14.2 million for the project in 2007. It was envisioned as Phase 1 of a two-phase project, according to Thelma Drake, a former congresswoman who was instrumental in securing the money. The two structures were to be connected by an atrium, she said.

A contract was awarded in August 2009 to the Haskell Co., a Jacksonville, Fla., construction firm, for $11.6 million with options that could increase the cost to $16.5 million.

The multi story building will contain administrative areas, conference rooms, data processing areas and space for commercial food-service vendors.

It will be the second new facility built for JFCOM in recent months. A $15 million joint deployment and maritime operations center, which JFCOM shares with the Navy's Fleet Forces Command, opened in October. That 49,000-square-foot facility is packed with state-of-the-art data, communications and audio-visual equipment.

Gates wants a final plan for JFCOM's closure on his desk by mid-December. President Barack Obama must approve the move. Gates aims to have the shutdown completed by next September.

Spokesmen for JFCOM and the Navy declined to speculate last week on what will become of the new headquarters if JFCOM is shut down.

Drake, who is now director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, said she was shocked by the news that JFCOM had been targeted for closure.

"This obviously wasn't on their radar screen until recently," she said, "or they would have never started that building."

Part of the motivation for building a new headquarters, Drake said, was to help ensure that the command would stay in Norfolk. She said the current office space was outmoded and there was concern that JFCOM's functions might migrate to Orlando, Fla., where all of the military services have high-tech training and simulation operations similar to JFCOM's.

That is one of the fears now as local leaders mobilize to try to avert the planned closure, which would put as many as 6,000 jobs at risk. The Hampton Roads congressional delegation has pledged to hold hearings after Congress reconvenes next week, and there has even been talk of a lawsuit.

Gates shows no signs of yielding to the pressure.

In a speech last week to the American Legion National Convention in Milwaukee, he defended the package of efficiency initiatives he announced last month, which included the JFCOM closure.

At a time of economic duress, the Defense Department must "make every dollar count" and "fundamentally change the way we do business," he said. "It means shifting resources from bureaucracies and headquarters and overhead to the combat capabilities needed today and in the future."

The next day in Baghdad, at a ceremony relieving Army Gen. Raymond Odierno of command over U.S. forces in Iraq, Gates said Odierno is the right man at the right time for his next assignment: shutting down JFCOM. Odierno is slated to take over as the command's last leader next month.

"There, as you all know," Gates said, "he faces a difficult and delicate task - and a dangerous one as well, at least in the political sense."

Pilot writers Kate Wiltrout and Bill Bartel contributed to this report.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com