Fort Pickett getting $416 million embassy security training facility
Fort Pickett in Southside Virginia will be the new home of a $416 million embassy security training facility, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has learned.
The formal announcement of groundbreaking at the military base in Nottoway County is expected to come today.
Virginia was chosen for the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center facility over competing sites in Georgia and West Virginia.
Once completed in 2019, officials said the facility will train between 8,000 and 10,000 people a year, including members of the State Department diplomatic corps and military personnel who are assigned to protect U.S. embassies, missions and consulates around the world.
Securing the training center culminates years of work, research and political navigation by the commonwealth’s bipartisan congressional delegation, led by Sens. Timothy M. Kaine and Mark R. Warner, D-Va., with the support of the administration of Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
“After years of unnecessary delays and hurdles, the brave men and women who serve in our embassies around the world — many of whom call Virginia home — will finally have a dedicated facility to receive the best possible security training before they embark on assignments in high-threat countries across the globe,” read a joint statement issued by the senators, McAuliffe and U.S. Reps. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-3rd; J. Randy Forbes, R-4th; Robert J. Wittman, R-1st; Gerald E. “Gerry” Connolly, D-11th; Robert Hurt, R-5th; Dave Brat, R-7th; Don Beyer, D-8th; and Scott Rigell, R-2nd.
“We are especially proud that such an important facility will be located in Virginia. As four different federal agency evaluations and an independent cost-benefit analysis made clear, only Fort Pickett meets every requirement for a consolidated Foreign Affairs Security Training Center, making it by far the best site — both from a strategic and cost perspective. We are pleased that groundbreaking is finally underway in Nottoway County.”
Members of the Virginia delegation said they have worked together for months to fight efforts to derail construction of the site at Fort Pickett.
The formal announcement is a milestone of renewal for the installation about 50 miles southwest of Richmond. The fort, constructed shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, was recommended for closure as part of the 1995 round of the Base Closure and Realignment Commission. Thousands of acres of the U.S. Army base were transferred to the state Department of Military Affairs and became headquarters for the Virginia National Guard.
Kaine called the construction of the training center “a security imperative.”
“The world is changing and so are the needs to secure our personnel in these high-threat posts,” said Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. “We’ve got to have more security, and we owe it to our people.”
The project, which involves tree clearing and construction of buildings and training facilities, is expected to bring additional jobs and economic development to the area.
Kaine said Fort Pickett is “a huge facility that is just begging for additional use.”
Administration and elected officials had identified the need for a training facility back in 2011 — long before the 2012 raid on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Reports by the General Services Administration, Office of Management and Budget, and General Accounting Office had favored selecting Fort Pickett, which carried a price tag roughly $90 million less than competing sites and was favored for its proximity to Washington and defense-related government.
But Virginia advocates for the center faced some pushback from House members who wanted to steer the project to one of the competing facilities in the running. Resulting delays took months to sort out, even after Fort Pickett was identified as an optimal location and continued even after Benghazi.
“The thing that troubles me the most is the delay,” Kaine said during a hearing last October.
“I’m just mindful here of time passing,” Kaine continued. “It has been five years since the State-GSA (General Services Administration) process chose Fort Pickett as the site after a multi-year search to get to that decision. It has been three years since the attack on Benghazi,” Kaine said.
“These are tough times for the people doing these jobs, and I think we need to move with dispatch to make sure the security we provide is as strong as it can be.”
