Defense Cuts: Assessing the Casualties : Bay Area: Navy pullouts could hit hard at many economic levels. Officials who had called for military cutbacks are now in an awkward position.

Millie Aure, tending the counter of the pizza parlor she bought last June, tried to envision what business would be like if the Alameda Naval Air Station, located 100 yards away, closed.

“Oh, my goodness, it’s going to be dead,” she said Monday as a sailor and two sons of sailors ate in her small restaurant.

Aure, who runs the establishment with relatives, said she never would have made the investment if she had known the air station might close. “If they close (the air station), I don’t know what we would do,” she said, her toddler granddaughter at her feet.

News that U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s list of military facilities that may be closed across the nation included six naval installations in the San Francisco Bay Area raised fears of economic upheaval from Aure’s lunch counter to the offices of local politicians.

Union officials worried about the loss of blue collar jobs. And liberal Bay Area officials, who in the past have called for defense cuts, found themselves in the odd position of second-guessing the plan.

If all the bases targeted by Cheney’s plan are closed, California would be especially hard hit. The list includes Ft. Ord near Monterey, the Sacramento Army Depot, El Centro Naval Air Facility in San Diego County, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and the Los Angeles Air Force Base.

Within California, the Bay Area stands to lose the most. Aside from the Alameda Naval Air Station, other Bay Area facilities on Cheney’s list are the Alameda Naval Aviation Depot, Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Oakland Naval Supply Center, Treasure Island Naval Station--which sits in the bay between San Francisco and Oakland--and Moffett Field Naval Air Station in Santa Clara County.

The Navy employs roughly 56,000 civilians and military personnel in the Bay Area. If all the Bay Area naval installations on Cheney’s list were shut and the personnel relocated, the region would lose about 34,113 jobs. If the cuts come to pass, the Navy’s only remaining presence in this major West Coast port would be at the Concord Naval Weapons Depot and Mare Island Naval Shipyard, where repairs are made to ships and submarines.

Nowhere would the effect of closures be more direct than in Alameda. Word that the Navy might leave came as Alameda officials laid plans to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the Navy’s presence. Mayor Chuck Corica noted that Alameda, a city in the shadow of Oakland, sold 2,800 acres to the Navy for a dollar in 1937. Today, the city of 77,000 people revolves around the Alameda Naval Air Station.

“It would have a terrible effect,” Corica said.

For many officials in this bastion of liberalism, the potential of closures presents a political problem. For example, Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley) long has been a strident critic of military spending. But he also represents a district where many voters work for the Navy.

“We do not want to be forced to be parochial,” said Dellums aide Robert Brauer, raising the prospect that Dellums would oppose some of the reductions. “We would hope that (defense officials) didn’t construct, from their point of view, a parochial plan.”

On the street in the Bay Area, rumors have come and gone that the bases might close. But with such talk now more than rumors, workers began considering their options.

“You could find work, but the benefits and the working conditions wouldn’t be the same,” said Mike French, 38, a civilian mechanic at the Alameda Naval Air Station.

His current health and pension benefits are so good that he would leave the area simply to keep a job with the government, he said.

Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson expressed concern that the possible closures would have a “substantial negative impact” on his city, which is still struggling to recover from the damage caused by the Oct. 17 earthquake. At the same time, other Oakland officials said they hoped the closures, if they occur, would spark a new era of prosperity.

“Unlike the earthquake, we can plan for the closures,” said Oakland City Councilman Wilson Riles Jr. He said the busy port of Oakland could use the land now occupied by the naval supply depot for expansion.

“The defense budget is boom or bust. It goes up or down based on politics. . . . We have to wean ourselves from such a dependence on defense budgets,” Riles said.

In Alameda County, the impact of the base closures “would be dissipated fairly quickly” because of the Bay Area’s generally strong economy, predicted John Oliver Wilson, Bank of America’s chief economist.

But the view that the Bay Area economy would hardly miss a beat is not shared by many officials. While the local economy booms for professionals, jobs that pay well and offer health benefits to laborers are disappearing. Alameda County Supervisor Don Perata said the loss of military bases could result in “a new class of underinsured” people.

“It is a double whammy. You have reduced their earning power and made them a ward of the county,” Perata said.

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this story.