S.D. Joins Cities Bidding for New Pentagon Facility

San Diego is among about 200 municipalities nationwide that are bidding to attract a new Department of Defense office that would bring up to 7,000 jobs.

San Diego and its legion of competitors must respond by June 1 to a request for proposals issued by the Defense Department in March for a site of up to 50 acres and half a million square feet in building space to house its new Defense Finance and Accounting Services unit.

In issuing the proposal request, the government said it intends to consolidate most of the Pentagon’s bookkeeping functions under a single roof. Under one plan, the facility would house 4,000 workers, under another up to 7,000 workers.

Depending on how many employees are based at the new site, the buildings would total between 600,000 and 1 million square feet of space under roof.

Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce President Lee Grissom heads a local search committee that has come up with four tentative San Diego County sites to propose to the government, three of which lie within San Diego city limits and one that is in Chula Vista.

The chamber’s director of economic research Max Schetter, declined to give specific details of the proposed sites.

Chamber officials acknowledged, however, that San Diego is a long shot to attract the new facility. That’s due to the intense competition from other U.S. cities and because the Defense Department is seeking incentives--”free buildings, free utilities, free everything,” Schetter said--that San Diego may not be in a position to offer.

San Diego’s drawing card is that the county has the largest number of uniformed military personnel, Schetter said, and is No. 1 in the nation for defense payroll, including uniformed, civilian and retired personnel.

San Diego will submit its bid by June 1, with the first cut of finalists to be announced by the government in November. The Pentagon will announce its final decision in March, 1993. The installation is to be open for occupancy in 1995.