This Post story today on the plans to move 19,000 defense workers out of the immediate DC area to Ft. Belvoir and to that big honking new building going up at I-95 and Seminary Road gives me an excuse to catch up readers who maybe haven't been reading about Near SE for years and years about the neighborhood's own
BRAC-mandated move. The
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which occupies the lovely all-but-windowless building on the southeast corner of First and M, is scheduled to move to
a new campus at Ft. Belvoir, with a legislated deadline move-in date of Sept. 15, 2011. According to their
FAQ, NGA will be closing their existing sites (including other ones in Bethesda and Reston) "from late 2010 through 2011." Given how supersecret NGA is, I'm not sure we'll know exactly when they're moving until we see U-Hauls pull up to the back door. (Though if someone wants to
whisper any specifics in my ear....)
So, at some point over the next 18 months, the operations will be moved out of Near Southeast, at which time the site will become just another section of
The Yards awaiting redevelopment. (And then I'll be able to take pictures of it without having armed guards yell at me and/or call DC cops to have them question me.) The building and its parking lot are currently slated to become home to office space and retail in the
project's third phase, the timing of which can probably best be described as "Not Anytime Soon."