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The dining hall that has served Weapons Training Battalion for more than half a century will be replaced by a facility with nearly four times the capacity, making way for a growing Embassy Security Group.

Photo by Mike DiCicco

Weapons Training Bn., Embassy Security Group to get new mess hall

18 Oct 2013 | Mike DiCicco Marine Corps Base Quantico

There have been a lot of changes in the Weapons Training Battalion neighborhood recently, with the battalion getting a new barracks this month and the Embassy Security Group in the process of moving in next door. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the mess hall. Built in 1957, the building, known simply as Weapons Training Battalion Dining Facility, no longer has the capacity to serve the growing population that surrounds it.

Now, a new mess hall is in the works for the campus, which is off MCB-4 on the west side of Marine Corps Base Quantico. On Sept. 4, a contract was awarded to build the new mess hall, and the first preconstruction meeting among representatives of the base, the contractor and Naval Facilities Engineering Command was held Oct. 8.

The new mess hall, scheduled for completion in April 2015, will be almost three times the size of the existing, and its seating capacity will be nearly five times larger.

Capt. Brian Basile, the battalion’s logistics officer, said the need for the new chow hall is acute, especially because Weapons Training shares the facility with the Embassy Security Group students and staff, and ESG class sizes have doubled. He said the two organizations are coordinating their eating times, and he is working to have meal hours extended. The mess hall is open for two hours for breakfast, but only 90 minutes for lunch and 60 minutes for dinner.

Under these circumstances, Basile said meals are no longer social times. “You eat, you get your tray through and depart ASAP.”

The new mess hall will be 16,630 square feet in size, with a capacity of 562 diners, versus the current, 5,960-square foot hall’s capacity of 119.

Basile said crowding at the facility hurts ESG more than his battalion, as most of the 200 or so Marines in Weapons Training Bn. live off base. Only about 30 live in the barracks, and just 16 have meal cards.

“It’s going to help us out immensely,” Frank Baker, deputy director of ESG, said of the new mess hall. He said the group has been authorized to add up to 1,000 Marines, nearly doubling its size. Not all are stationed at Quantico, but they all have to go through school at Quantico. Classes that were about 100 strong last year are now running between 200 and 240 students.

In addition, a new ESG unit of 122 Marines is about to move into the old Weapons Training Bn. barracks, and about the time the new chow hall opens in spring of 2015, Baker said, the ESG headquarters will move from the main side of the base to the new compound next to Weapons Training. The move will complete the group’s migration to the west side of the base, after a barracks was completed there in 2010 and a training center opened last year.

“Weapons Training Battalion needed [the new mess hall] all along, but with us moving over there, it really helped their cause,” Baker said.

With the new ESG unit about to arrive a year and a half before the new dining hall opens, Basile said, “There’s going to be a longer line than usual, down the street, waiting for chow.”

In addition to expanding capacity, the new facility will also represent a major upgrade in modernization.

For one thing, Chris Vaught, engineering technician with the Resident Officer in Charge of Construction, said it will include a drive-through. “I’ve never seen that in my time in service at the 15 or 20 different bases I’ve been on,” Vaught said.

And a photovoltaic array will collect energy for the facility.

Basile said he expected that the drive-through will serve fast food, attracting Marines who would otherwise spend more money to eat at fast-food restaurants off base.

Vaught said design work for the project is just beginning. “We’ve got to go through the whole design phase and get some concurrence on the design before we start building.”

He said the mess hall will be built just off MCB-4, at the entrance to the Weapons Training Bn. campus, where a gravel overflow parking lot now sits. It will include three new, paved parking lots, totaling around 150 spaces.

Baltimore-based C.E.R. Inc. is building the facility on a $11.7 million contract.

The existing chow hall will be demolished after the new one has been open for 45 days.

— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com


Marine Corps Base Quantico