FORT JOHNSON, La. — Fort Johnson leadership, dignitaries and representatives grabbed shovels and hardhats before digging up a shovel of dirt to signify breaking ground at the sight of the installation’s future Joint Readiness Training Center Joint Operations Center May 28.
As the U.S. Army’s premier joint training facility, JRTC provides realistic, relevant and rigorous training to units preparing for assigned missions and deployments.
Once complete, the new JOC will modernize and standardize JRTC and Fort Johnson’s command and control, network and audiovisual capabilities in support of rotations.
Maj. Gen. David W. Gardner, Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Johnson commanding general, spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony.
Gardner remarked that it was a big crowd and he thanked everyone for attending. Gardner also thanked the Corps of Engineers for getting the project over the hump so it could begin.
“This has been a long time coming,” he said. “These buildings that we have been using are not as young as JRTC, in fact, they are all significantly older’” he said.
That’s why Gardner said several senior commanders and a lot of other folks have had a vested interest in making this project a reality.
“Frankly, for the last two years, I have been searching for any forcing function I could to make sure that this thing would finally come to fruition,” Gardner said. “I appreciate all the operations group, installation and community support in getting us this far.”
Construction was awarded to Sauer Construction, based out of Jacksonville Florida, March 8 and is scheduled to be completed by October 2027.
“It won’t be complete tomorrow, but this JOC is going to help get us to that next level with everything under one roof,” said Gardner.
The facility will consolidate four existing buildings into one — the Operations Center, Operations Group Headquarters, Plans/Exercise Maneuver and Control and Ops Group, will all be consolidated in the new JOC.
The building will encompass 97,248 square feet and will be divided into two wings. The West wing is slated to be the Ops Wing and the East wing will be the Administration Wing.
Nathan Jernigan, Director of Public Works, said the Joint Operations Center is Fort Johnson’s epicenter for all things having to do with rotational training units.
“This new facility will equip Fort Johnson with a state-of-the-art infrastructure providing for effective and efficient mission command and control of the monthly rotations,” Jernigan said.
Construction of the new JOC is a culmination of more than 10 years of planning and concept development. Jernigan said the Directorate of Public Works, along with numerous stakeholders on and off the installation, have spent that time executing planning and concept development for the new facility.
“As this project moves into the design phase, our DPW master planning team will be working alongside our U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and design team partners to transform the concept into a constructable product, and by late fall, we’ll begin seeing physical construction within the North Fort footprint,” he said.
The total cost of the project is $116 million. Gardner said this wasn’t just your typical put in a request and wait for approval situation.
“It took a lot of folks at Forces Command, Headquarters, Department of the Army and, frankly, Congressional support from representatives representing this area to make this project a realization,” Gardner said. “In the end, it’s going to be a fantastic facility.”
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