Mark Center Building

The Mark Center Building is a United States military installation and office building in Alexandria, Virginia. It is operated by the Washington Headquarters Services (WHS) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD), and provides office space for several other DoD agencies. The name of the site refers to the "Mark Center" property development in which it is located, at the intersection of Seminary Road and Beauregard Street at the Interstate 395 interchange.[1]

Mark Center Building (left) and Institute for Defense Analyses Headquarters (right)
The Mark Center Building seen from Interstate 395

Sixteen acres of the site were sold to the federal government and are administratively considered part of Fort Belvoir.[1] It is the tallest building constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers.[2]

History

The site was selected in September 2008 as a result of the 2005 round of Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC), and is also referred to as BRAC-133.[3] The 2005 BRAC process mandated a move of many DoD offices from leased office space to secure sites that could meet DoD's high anti-terrorism security standards.

Federal employees began moving to the center in August 2011, 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 must commute by car or bus to the new site via a highway that already handled 200,000 vehicles per day.[5][6]

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References
  1. "Base Realignment & Closure (BRAC) - City of Alexandria, VA". alexandriava.gov. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  2. Justin Matthew Ward (14 September 2011). "BRAC 2005: on time, on budget in Northeast". army.mil.
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-03. Retrieved 2011-08-09.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. Christy Goodman. "Va. BRAC task force to manage traffic as Mark Center opens". Washington Post. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  5. Christy Goodman. "Va. congressmen criticize Mark Center occupancy plan". Washington Post. Retrieved 2 June 2015.
  6. "Report: Pentagon BRAC study used faulty data to estimate Mark Center relocation impact". TBD. Archived from the original on April 22, 2011. Retrieved 2 June 2015.

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