MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. -- The Legal Services Support Section for the National Capital Region, which stood up at Quantico more than a year ago, will soon have a new home between Lejeune Hall and the Marine Memorial Chapel.
“They came here without the required facilities,” said Joe Provenzano, deputy director of the Installation and Environment Division. “So we have a trailer complex going up for them.”
Utilities are already being run to the site on the chapel lawn and trailers are being delivered.
The construction, which, according to floor plans, will be built as a single structure, will comprise 8,640 square feet of floor space.
Much of the legal support team has been housed in Lejeune Hall, but several of its offices are scattered throughout the base.
“There’s just not enough space to fit us,” said Capt. Maggie Barikbin, director of Civil Law for the LSSS. She said the Administrative Law team will leave its home on Range Road, the court reporters will leave Butler Hall, and Defense Services Organization will move out of its location on Roan Street, all to join their counterparts in the new structure.
For the time being, at least, Legal Assistance will stay on Roan Street, and the brand-new Victims’ Legal Counsel Organization will remain in Cox Hall at The Basic School.
“I think eventually it will just require us to get a whole new building before we can include them,” Barikbin said.
The LSSS moved to Quantico in September 2012 as part of a Corps-wide restructuring that consolidated legal services under four regional commands. Each of the other three has its own building.
Provenzano said the structure is scheduled to be completed in late March but will then have to be outfitted with communications lines, furniture and other equipment.
“Probably around early summertime they’ll be good to go,” he said.
He said the location was chosen for its proximity to utilities and the courtrooms in Lejeune Hall.
The new construction will be home to the LSSS until a permanent space is found, whether through construction or the repurposing of existing space, Provenzano said, adding that it has not yet been decided who will occupy the offices LSSS is leaving in Lejeune Hall.
“The other thing the trailers will help give us is a little more structure,” Barikbin said, noting that personnel will be able to be located close to those they work with, rather than wedged wherever they can fit.
— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com