Navy Office Plan May Be Cut by One-Third in N.Va.
A Navy office project for up to 20,000 workers in Northern Virginia may be scaled down by as much as one-third to reflect expected cuts in the defense budget, federal officials have told five developers bidding on the contract.</br></br>The Navy project, now an $821 million proposal for at least 3 million square feet of office space, could be reduced to a less expensive plan for as little as 2 million square feet, General Services Administration officials said.</br></br>Navy sources said Friday that the request amounted to an acknowledgment that the current proposal may be too large in light of a rising federal budget deficit and projections for a scaled-down Navy in the 1990s.</br></br>Several members of Congress, including Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), have encouraged the Navy to reconsider the size of the project, which has been proposed for six sites in Arlington and Alexandria.</br></br>In a letter last month to Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III, Wolf said that decreased tensions with the Soviet Union, the opening of Eastern Europe and the rising U.S. budget deficit warranted another look at the Navy project.