The Army awarded a $221.2 million contract to expand the Von Braun Complex in Redstone Arsenal at Huntsville, Ala., the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said last week.
That will mean constructing a roughly 840,000 square foot building to house 2,248 MDA employees, people who now work in or near Washington, D.C. They are moving to Alabama because of the Base Realignment and Closure process.
Additionally, the building will house 240 people from Huntsville and 161 Army Space and Missile Defense Agency positions from the Washington, D.C., area.
Archer Western Contractors, of Atlanta, will provide the building, which will be the largest single building at Redstone Arsenal.
The building will include about 750,000 square feet of administrative space, an 800-seat auditorium, a cafeteria, a fitness center and a central mechanical plant.
Construction will occur in two phases.
Phase I will be completed in spring 2010, allowing move-in of the first 800 to 1,000 workers that summer. Phase II will be completed in early 2011 with move-in of remaining workers in the summer.
When the building is completed, the entire Von Braun Complex, including buildings that were completed in 2004 and 2007, will house approximately 4,500 personnel.
The Redstone building project, which will be constructed via a design-build contract, will be incrementally funded over three years with initial funding of $67 million in the current fiscal 2008. Then there will be an additional $127 million in fiscal 2009, and $27.8 million in fiscal 2010. Groundbreaking and construction are expected as early as spring.