Arlington Peers Into the Void

The Pentagon's plan now goes before the nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which will make its recommendation to President Bush on Sept. 8. The president must accept or reject the list in full and submit it to Congress by Sept. 23. Roughly 85 percent of the changes proposed in earlier rounds of base closings have stuck.

If the plan goes through, the changes would take effect over the next six years. Arlington leaders said the county would lose about 10 percent of its employee and commercial office base. Additionally, Virginia officials have warned that an additional 27,000 workers remain in leased space that does not meet the new security requirements but was not affected by Friday's announcement. Those jobs could be moved once those leases expire.

Under the plan, Fort Belvoir, already Fairfax County's largest employer, stands to gain more than 18,000 civilian and military employees. Congested roads already are a serious problem around the base, prompting officials Friday to talk of extending Metrorail to Fort Belvoir and petitioning the federal government to pay for it.

Analysts estimate Fairfax accounts for about 19 percent of the nonconforming Pentagon-leased space in Northern Virginia; Alexandria has 18 percent. The remainder is spread between Loudoun and Prince William, which also stand to gain from the relocations, along with Stafford County.

The anti-terrorism standards -- which require, among other things, that buildings not on military bases be set back at least 82 feet from traffic to protect against truck bombs -- were adopted two years ago, but they are not fully in effect except for new construction. They become mandatory for new leases in October. The requirements will be phased in for all lease renewals starting in 2009.

In addition to the setback requirement, the new Pentagon rules call for buildings to be more collapse-resistant; to eliminate uncontrolled below-ground or rooftop parking; and to have protective window glazing, mailroom ventilation and emergency shut-off switches for air distribution.

Legislators are quick to point out that even the Pentagon does not meet the new standards. Local planners believed them to be so costly and impossible to achieve that they found themselves hoping adjustments would be hammered out by lawmakers to allow more flexible performance-based standards.

"They've already applied flexibility to the Pentagon, and no building in the region meets the standard," Fisette said a day before the relocations were announced. "You have to think common sense will win out."

That hope was bolstered last week when a Pentagon spokeswoman suggested that the Defense Department might now indeed ease the setback rule at "existing buildings where the required level of protection can be mitigated and shown to be achieved."

In Arlington, the push was on to devise mitigation plans. County officials said they had spent countless hours working closely with Defense Department officials, discussing how they could use different techniques to bring the county's urban landscape into compliance.

One of those possibilities involved grouping buildings into secure clusters -- such as in Ballston Plaza and Crystal City -- the idea being that it would be easier to protect a group of buildings rather than just one. While developers can harden building exteriors, glaze windows and use creative landscaping to help shield a structure from a car-bomb blast, in many cases they knew they could not find solutions to effectively distance buildings from the urban streets they were built on.

Arlington officials conceded they were particularly wary of employing these mitigation techniques, which run counter to the county's history of "urban village" planning in places such as Crystal City, where work continues to make the landscape more open and inviting.