NAVFAC Atlantic and OICC Florence Participated in a Ground Breaking Ceremony at MCB Camp Lejeune to Mark the Beginning of a $1.15 Billion Five-Year Revitalization Effort

On Thursday April 22, 2021 Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) Atlantic and Office in Charge of Construction (OICC) Florence participated in a ground breaking ceremony to mark the beginning of a five-year effort to revitalize Marine Corps Base (MCB) Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) New River and MCAS Cherry Point. The ground breaking was held at the soon to be replaced 10th Marine Regiment headquarters which will be the first of many Hurricane Florence related projects.

Capt. Jim Brown, commanding officer, OICC Florence, began the ceremony by delivering a commitment to the installation.

“We need to return it back to what it was, and in the process, make it better, and more lethal than what it was before,” Brown said. “We will endeavor to do that.”

The onset of $1.15 billion in military construction projects will fully replace and improve facilities damaged by Hurricane Florence which made landfall in Eastern North Carolina in September of 2018. The 31 military construction projects to replace 45 buildings damaged by Florence across the three installations will be broken into seven different packages, five at MCB Camp Lejeune, two at MCAS Cherry Point and MCAS New River ranging from $200 to $300 million a package.

Brown assured everyone in attendance on Thursday, “We will restore this base, we will get it back, and we will make it better than it was before.”

Rear Adm. Dean VanderLey, commander, NAVFAC Atlantic and Capt. Brown joined Maj. Gen. Julian D. Alford, commanding general, Marine Corps Installations East – MCB Camp Lejeune, Walter E. Gaskin, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, and George Rogers, chief executive officer of RQ Construction, LLC to commemorate the occasion.