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BRAC jobs will have a big effect on Fredericksburg-area economic development Date published: 10/17/2009
BY BILL FREEHLING
The thousands of military jobs coming to the Fredericksburg area could create "a change of the business dynamic," Joe Grzeika told an audience of area business leaders Thursday night. Grzeika, who is chairman of both the King George County Board of Supervisors and the locally run Military Affairs Council, made his comments as part of a forum on the Base Realignment and Closure jobs coming to the area in the next few years. Quantico Marine Corps Base is expected to add 2,700 jobs by September 2011 as part of the most-recent BRAC decisions. That represents a 20 percent bump in Quantico's work force, and more jobs could be coming. The jobs are still two years away from arriving, but Grzeika and other panelists at the Thursday event noted that changes are already under way that will impact the area's economic development prospects. The shell of a 719,000-square-foot building at Quantico that will house investigative arms of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as other federal agencies, is already in place. The building will be finished in about 13 months, and the agencies will then move in over the next eight months. The anticipation of those jobs has led to the development of two 140,000-square-foot Class A office buildings at the Quantico Corporate Center in North Stafford, which the Silver Cos. is developing. A third building is in the works. Numerous defense contractors have signed leases. That area along U.S. 1 in North Stafford is "vibrant and growing" despite the recession, Grzeika said, and more growth is to come. John Rosewarne, the BRAC coordinator for the Quantico base, said he has never seen the level of construction now occurring at Quantico. He noted that other federal defense agencies have expressed interest in the base. "I see Quantico continuing to grow and continuing to expand," Rosewarne said. The 2,700 new positions are expected to create "offshoot" jobs in private contracting as well as retail, child care and other services. The number is hard to pin down, but Quantico/Belvoir Regional Business Alliance Executive Director Miles Friedman pegged it at two or three times the 2,700.
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