Fort Belvoir gate schedule to change

Effective Wednesday, Sept. 27, there will be some gate schedule changes at Fort Belvoir.

Tulley Gate, which has been undergoing road repair and repaving since early August, will reopen but have different hours. It will be open daily from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and will process visitors and commercial traffic through the visitor control center during those times.

Lieber Gate will remain open and serve as the 24/7 access gate, processing visitors and commercial traffic after-hours, on weekends and holidays.

Kingman Gate’s hours will be reduced; it will be open Monday to Friday, 6-9 a.m. for entrance/exit, and then reopen from 3-6 p.m. for exiting the garrison only. The gate will be closed on holidays and training holidays.

Pence Gate will be closed until further notice. Walker and Telegraph Gates also will remain closed.

Credit: USAG Fort Belvoir Police Department/Facebook

The gate changes are taking effect about two weeks after Fort Belvoir’s Quarterly Community Housing Town Hall at which garrison leadership discussed continued challenges manning the security access checkpoints.

Garrison Commander Col. Joseph Messina told Fort Belvoir residents Sept. 14 that while the installation is authorized a total of 66 Department of the Army civilian gate guards, they currently have only 26 who are able to man a gate. To help bridge the gap, Messina made a request to all tenant units to provide manpower for gate security training. That yielded a total of nine people to help conduct rotational shifts. Messina and his sergeant major then trained their own garrison team, including religious support and headquarters battalion staff, to help man the gates.

“Even with the borrowed manpower we trained up, we’re still extremely short,” said Messina, warning that another gate closure could become necessary. He said he was facing some “tough decisions” at the time about whether to reopen Tulley and close Pence or Kingman Gate, and that a traffic flow analysis and study of the number of emergency vehicles entering Pence Gate would impact future decisions.

Fort Belvoir is holding a mass hiring event for Department of the Army security guards in October.