Surviving BRAC

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Surviving BRAC

Communities point the way to successful transformation

By Richard R. Burgess, Managing Editor
Sea Power
June 2005

[Click here to view the complete BRAC list (pdf)]

Fred Kittinger recalls thinking it was “a shame” when he learned in March 1993 that the Naval Training Center (NTC) Orlando, Fla., was on the Pentagon's list of bases to be closed. Kittinger, then vice president of government relations for the Orlando Chamber of Commerce, was among the hundreds of people in Orlando who had labored for months to keep the base open.

Many saw NTC as key to Orlando's economic stability. It provided about 4,500 jobs and pumped $500 million annually into the area economy, said Bruce Hossfield, a senior planner for Orlando's government. NTC had been in operation for 30 years and was a pillar of the region's economy.

The base was closed, but the long-term economic devastation that many feared never materialized. The former Navy base, on 1,100 acres three miles east of the city center, is now the site of Baldwin Park, home to 3,000 residential units, 350,000 square feet of retail space and 1 million square feet of office space along with parks, lakes and wetlands. When build-out is completed, nearly 6,000 jobs will generate approximately $200 million in wages annually for the region, according to Jane Smalley, director of communications for Baldwin Park.

Hossfield estimates Baldwin Park properties will ring up about $20 million annually in taxes for local governments in the Orlando area.

There have been similar successes elsewhere. Oliver McMillan, a development company hired by the town of Glenview, Ill., near Chicago, created residential and commercial properties that employ 4,000 people, 10 times the number of jobs at the old Naval Air Station Glenview that was closed in 1995.

In Charleston, S.C., a redevelopment authority created a multi-use site with more than 90 tenants -- including several defense agencies -- that today employs 4,500 people, 1,000 more than were on the payroll at Charleston Naval Station and Naval Shipyard, which were closed in the mid-1990s.

The story of renewal in the wake of Pentagon base closures is not an unbroken record of success, however. At several locations, factional infighting created huge barriers to redevelopment. The proposed redevelopment of the site at the former Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro, Calif., never got off the ground, and renewal efforts at Fort Sheridan, Ill., near Glenview, were delayed for years as local political entities created three different development agencies to transform the site.

The lessons learned at these communities should prove valuable to the interest groups, local governments and Navy League councils that have struggled for months to keep their nearby bases off the 2005 list of military facilities to be closed. That list was sent by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in mid-May to the new Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission and congressional defense committees [see list, Page 56].

The commission has until Sept. 8 to send the president its conclusions based on the Department of Defense (DoD) list. The president must accept or reject the list in toto by Sept. 23. Under the base closure law, he cannot select individual bases on the list for closure. If the president accepts the commission list, it becomes binding 45 legislative days thereafter unless Congress enacts a joint resolution of disapproval. If the president rejects the list, the commission has to prepare a new one.

This is the Pentagon's fifth round of base closures since 1988. During the first four, almost 500 installations were closed or realigned, including 50 that are still going through the closure process. According to Pentagon estimates, BRAC produced net savings of $16.7 billion between 1988 and 2001, and since then has saved approximately $7 billion yearly in recurring costs.

This year's BRAC features one major difference from earlier rounds: mothballing -- reserving a base for some future military use -- is no longer an option. The Pentagon views total divestiture as necessary to aggressively reduce its infrastructure and associated costs.

The difference between success and failure in attracting new businesses and creating communities on the sites of former military facilities lies in the foresight and willingness of local interest groups to compromise. The communities destined for success are those able to create a plan for the future and develop a political network to support it, according to business and municipal officials interviewed by Seapower.

In Orlando, the city government had been preparing in case the NTC appeared on the 1993 BRAC closure list, said Herb Smetheram, now senior director of international business development for ZHA Inc., Orlando. The mayor of Orlando, Glenda Hood -- now Florida's secretary of state -- had formed a “semi-secret” committee to begin quietly planning for such an eventuality, he said.

Immediately after the BRAC announcement, Hood hired Smetheram to serve as executive director of Orlando's new base redevelopment commission. As a former commander of a tenant command on the base, Smetheram's familiarity with NTC would prove an advantage in the months to come.

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