The Virginia State Police has leased two office buildings at Fort Monroe in Hampton. The 13,019 square feet of office space is located in Buildings 75 and 106 at the former army base, now part of a 565-acre National Historic Landmark District.
One 7,600-square-foot building will be used as offices and classrooms. Initially as many as nine uniformed and administrative personnel will move to the North Gate area of Fort Monroe on October 15 from the existing state police headquarters on South Military Highway in Chesapeake. The head count will increase as leases at other facilities expire, according to state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller. “This is a cost saving measure as we are now able to provide our personnel with much needed space while consolidating real estate,” she said in a statement.
The other leased building, a 5,400-square-foot warehouse/garage, will be used to house vehicles.
Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder said he is pleased with increased interest from agencies requesting to move to the property. The city of Hampton leases a community center along Fenwick Road, and The Hampton Police Division uses a building as a training center. Other agencies providing veterans services also will move into office space soon.
Through an affiliated entity, Divaris Real Estate Inc., based in Virginia Beach, leases and manages the commercial property for the Fort Monroe Authority. The authority serves as master developer, contracting with third-party service providers to transform a formerly active military base into a new community.
This article doesn’t even mention that more than half of Fort Monroe is actually a national monument, which is a form of national park. Moreover, the land there at Old Point Comfort, which contains the former Army post, is not merely “now” a national historic landmark. Almost all of it has been so designated for a half-century. That’s why it’s so bizarrely unfortunate that Virginia’s leaders, and its business community, are so set on suboptimizing the overall asset—as was done when Virginia bamboozled the president into creating only a fake, split national monument on the sense-of-place-defining bayfront. Even if you can’t think past money enrichment to other forms of enrichment, what’s happening at Fort Monroe is failure. (Though yes, this police use of property away from the bayfront is surely a good idea.) Please see http://fortmonroenationalpark.org/ . Thanks. Steve Corneliussen, SaveFortMonroe@gmail.com
--SteveCorneliussen
Oct. 29, 2012 at 04:53 PM