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.

U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s plan to study closing six Navy installations in the San Francisco Bay Area raised fears Monday of economic upheaval for everyone from lunch counter owners to officials representing cities that would bear the brunt of the possible closures.

“Oh, my goodness, it’s going to be dead,” Millie Aure said, envisioning what business would be like at her pizza parlor if the Alameda Naval Air Station, located 100 yards away, closes.

She and her relatives scraped together enough money to buy the business in June. She said she never would have made the investment if she had known the air station might close. “If they close, I don’t know what we would do.”

As word of Cheney’s plan spread, union officials worried about losses of blue-collar jobs while liberal Bay Area officials, who in the past have demanded defense cuts, found themselves in the odd position of second-guessing the plan. Meanwhile, the mayors of some cities were gearing up to fight any effort to close the bases.

Nowhere would the effect be more direct than in Alameda. Word that the Navy might leave came as local officials laid plans to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the Navy’s presence in the East Bay city.

Mayor Chuck Corica, who has lived in Alameda for 58 years, noted that the city sold 2,800 acres to the Navy for a dollar back in 1937. Today, the city of 77,000 people is built around the base.

“It would have a terrible effect,” Corica said. But instead of dwelling on how the city would deal with the loss, he was plotting a strategy to ensure “that the land doesn’t become available for anything other than the Navy.”

Cheney said he plans to study closing 55 bases nationwide. The plan hits especially hard in California, where 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 are on his list.

Bay Area Hit Hard

Within California, the Bay Area is targeted for the most potential closures. 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 56,000 civilians and military personnel in the Bay Area. If all the naval bases on Cheney’s list, from Treasure Island to Moffett Field, were shut and the personnel relocated, the Bay Area would lose 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.

“It looks to me as if the Navy is abandoning the area,” said Robert Brauer, an aide to Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley).

For Dellums, and some other officials in this bastion of liberalism, the potential of closures presents a political problem. Dellums, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, 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,” Brauer said, 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.

Some See Boon

At the Naval Supply Center in economically depressed West Oakland, Ronnie Pearce, 19, has an application pending as a warehouseman--a job that pays $12 an hour.

Reflecting on the possibility the center now may close, Pearce said, “Those people in the White House don’t have to deal with the problems we have in West Oakland. We know a whole lot of people who aren’t working. Some are doing things that are illegal. It’s just going to be worse if they” follow through the closing the center.

Walter Johnson, head of the San Francisco Labor Council, said of Cheney’s list, “We’re really worried about the ripple effect it will have on the entire business community.”

Others hoped that the closures would start a new era of prosperity.

Oakland City Councilman Wilson Riles Jr. 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 heavy dependance 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.

Double Whammy’

But the view that the Bay Area will hardly miss an economic beat is not shared by many officials. Many civilians who hold the base jobs “are not easily trained and re-employed,” said Alameda County Supervisor Don Perata.

While the Bay Area economy booms for professionals, jobs that pay well and offer health benefits to laborers are disappearing. Perata said the loss of military bases could result in “a new class of under-insured” people who will further strain Alameda County.

“It is a double whammy. You have reduced their earning power and made them a ward of the county,” Perata said. However, he is convinced defense spending will drop. As it does, he said, he holds out the hopes the federal government will provide money to create “job replacement one to one.”

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this story.