BY PETER BACQUE

Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

When the 90 soldiers from the 16th Field Services Company arrived home at Fort Lee on Tuesday after 15 months in Iraq, they moved into barracks built in 1951.

"This is what they came into," said Larry Constantine, the post's facilities chief, looking around one of Building 8401's motel-style, two-soldier rooms.

No mold in the bathroom, no missing ceiling tiles, no leaking water. Just a clean, if ordinary, room in decent shape.

Fort Lee's barracks have had those kinds of problems, officials said, but work and money are correcting them.

The post's garrison commander recently asked First Sgt. Paulette Roberts-Detailer what the worst spot was in her Romeo Company barracks. "Ma'am," Roberts-Detailer said, "we don't really have a worst spot."

But that was only after the Army spent $800,000 this year to fix the structure's leaky, moldy insulation.

"It's an issue in motion and solution," Col. Terry Hildner said of the unending challenge of building upkeep.

After a recent online posting of a video showing poor conditions at a Fort Bragg, N.C., barracks, the Army was at pains to show that such issues are not the norm for its soldiers.

"We all agree that that was horrendous that soldiers should live like that," said Col. Gwen Bingham, Fort Lee's garrison commander. "We want to reassure you about how our soldiers live."

And, she said, "this is not a 'GI party' to make their quarters look pretty for you."

Fort Lee's commanders and civilian officials took local reporters on a six-hour tour of the facilities where troops live, eat, work out, relax and get services yesterday, including facilities that had maintenance problems.

"I'm going to take you to the very oldest" of his unit's barracks, said Hildner, commander of Fort Lee's 23rd Quartermaster Brigade, which trains more than 23,000 students a year.

On an average day, about 3,700 single soldiers live in the Petersburg-area fort's 20 active barracks, the oldest of which was renovated in 1998. Ten of those barracks are set to be demolished.

In the past nine years, Fort Lee has spent about $30 million on barracks maintenance and renovations, officials said.

And the post, growing because of changes in the Army, will spend $648.1 million building and renovating barracks, dining halls and other facilities by 2015, they said.

"It's not chance that the barracks stay clean," said Command Sgt. Maj. Mike Gilmore with the 23rd Brigade. "It stays clean because of a plan to keep it clean."

Contact Peter Bacqué at pbacque@timesdispatch.com