Life After Base Closures Often Turbulent, Communities Find

Last December, the Wild Weasel flight crews that soared to fame knocking out Iraqi radar during the 1991 Persian Gulf War locked the gate on George Air Force Base and walked away.

Their departure rendered their longtime military home a ghost town, complete with tumbleweeds rustling against the chain-link fences. It also left this High Desert community in San Bernardino County locked in a tug of war with a neighbor over control of the base’s valuable real estate.

George Air Force Base--slated for phaseout in 1988 in the initial wave of closure announcements as the Cold War began to fizzle--was the first major U.S. military installation to close since the late 1970s.

The experience has been a turbulent one, and it suggests that communities in California are likely to face a frustrating, messy ordeal as they attempt to convert their military bases to civilian use.

Victorville’s struggle serves as a warning that, despite years of preparation and noble intentions, passionate disputes can derail the best of plans. Experience shows it can take a decade or more before life returns to normal.

Many of the bases facing closure are on choice property--including several on waterfront--and hold enormous potential for business development or conversion into parklands and housing.

Yet, in many cases, officials attempting to devise smooth transitions and replace lost jobs and paychecks find themselves instead battling one another and the military bureaucracy.

“There is life after base closures, but it’s clearly not as simple as it has been made out to be by the Pentagon,” said Michael Closson, executive director of the Center for Economic Conversion, a nonprofit group in Mountain View that advises cities and states on base transitions.

Defense Secretary Les Aspin announced last month that eight military installations in California would close, setting off emotional save-our-base scrambles among legislators and community leaders. Along with those targeted in 1988 and 1991, that brought the total number of bases to be shut to 150 nationwide, including 18 major installations in the Golden State.

The announcements have left communities scurrying to ensure their future vitality as they confront economic devastation with the pullout of the military.

For California, the timing has been particularly bad because of the lingering three-year recession, during which the state has lost as many as 900,000 jobs. Once all the bases are padlocked, the state will have lost an additional 80,000 jobs, civilian as well as military.

The effects are expected to be felt most in regions that have been economically captive to the military for decades. In Monterey County, for example, Ft. Ord--scheduled to close in September, 1995--accounts for more than one-fifth of the economy.

Although a few chaotic years are probably inevitable when a base closes, many conversions have worked well over time, Closson noted.

Of more than 100 bases nationwide that shifted to civilian use in the 1960s and 1970s, scores now serve as college campuses, airports, industrial parks and even prisons.

They include Kincheloe Air Force Base in northern Michigan, where prisons, manufacturing plants and service companies employ 1,800 workers; Larson Air Force Base in Moses Lake, Wash., which now houses a jet pilot training center and an aircraft testing site, and Dow Air Force Base in Bangor, Me., home of a branch of the University of Maine, a commercial airport and a hotel.

It was easier then, however. Bases shutting down these days have the added burden of toxic waste cleanup, a task that adds time and millions of dollars onto the process.

In the most successful instances, Closson noted, the communities avoided dissent in the planning process.

That has not been the case at George Air Force Base.

When the Pentagon decided more than four years ago to phase out the wind-swept base, local officials were hardly gleeful but they didn’t mope, either.

“We came to the conclusion that being in the first round of closures was a definite asset,” said Peter R. D’Errico, executive director of the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority. “We could get a jump start.”

Soon after George appeared on the hit list, leaders of Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley and San Bernardino County began developing an ambitious plan to reuse the base as a full-service airport, with room left over for offices, manufacturing plants, housing and parks. The communities represent about 250,000 people in the Victor Valley.

The Victor Valley Economic Development Authority applied to the Air Force to get a portion of the base at no cost in a so-called public benefit transfer. At one point, Japan Air Lines committed to train its 747 crews at the base. Things were progressing smoothly.

Enter feisty Adelanto--a town of about 12,000 that for years had felt stunted by its location under the base’s noisy flight path. It had watched Victorville grow like Topsy in the 1980s as urbanites flocked there for moderately priced housing.

Although Adelanto boasts a spiffy new government center, the rest of the central business district consists primarily of a pizza place, a massage joint, a poker parlor and a few Joshua trees. But the town has waged an impressive effort to bring in businesses to its redevelopment area.

Working with a partner--Koll Co., the well-known Newport Beach developer--Adelanto came up with its own slick plan for buying the base and converting it into an international airport, capable of accommodating supersonic aircraft.

How Adelanto intends to finance the deal and the extent of Koll Co.’s involvement are unclear. The city has filed a flurry of lawsuits challenging the development authority’s moves.

The Air Force decided recently that a good portion of the property should go to the highest bidder, prompting the development authority to accuse the military of letting profit motive cause it to veer from initial plans. The development authority has vowed not to get into a bidding war. The governor’s office is trying to arrange a compromise.

Meanwhile, the controversy has stirred up a feud between a couple of Republican congressmen in Washington.

Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.), a key author of recent base-closing legislation, has effectively sided with Adelanto by objecting to a proposal that the Air Force donate about 60% of the base to the Victor Valley team. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), who backs the development authority plan and in whose district the base is located, has told Armey to quit “meddling.”

Base closure officials say that until the region decides on a single legal authority to handle the base reuse efforts, it has no choice but to allow all comers to compete.

“We cannot exclude any of the parties,” said John E. B. Smith, a civilian heading up the Air Force’s base closure office for the Southern-Pacific division.

Merchants suffering from the loss of 5,000 local jobs and a $156-million payroll wish officials would work things out--and soon.

“It’s certainly a waste to have that base just deteriorating,” said Alfred Villa, co-owner of Adelanto’s Pizza Factory restaurant, across the road from the base. “There’s a lot of room for a lot of things there, but the people have to move on it.”

Four hundred miles northwest of the Victorville desert, along misty Monterey Bay, trouble is brewing at Ft. Ord, which sits on some of the most valuable military property in California. Historic rivalries are percolating as nearby towns debate the relative merits of academia and tourism.

On the surface, the communities adjoining 44-square-mile Ft. Ord appear to be cooperating on a plan for turning the base into a Monterey Bay campus for the California State University system, with an emphasis on environmental study and research.

But underneath, emotions are roiling in a couple of gritty Army towns that expect to be walloped by the closure and want to see some quick tourism-related development that would create jobs.

Seaside, for example, wants to run the base’s two golf courses, but the Army has refused to give them up. Both Marina and Seaside have annexed some of the base’s land and therefore have some power over the land use.

Lance McClair, mayor of Seaside, blames “old biases” for what he calls other communities’ “underlying feeling that Seaside and Marina should not have a voice” in deciding what to do with Ft. Ord.

One proposal that has already been axed called for a Disney theme park, a cruise ship pier, resort hotels, a golf hall of fame and an Olympic training center. As it is, plans for a campus and a nearby environmental think tank displease many environmentalists, who favor no development at all.

The region had the best intentions to include all interested parties in the reuse process. In early discussions, 380 citizens from business, government and environmental and community groups worked on a task force. It has evolved into the much smaller Ft. Ord Reuse Group, which uses the acronym FORG (pronounced, perhaps wishfully, forge ).

Even so, with six different jurisdictions, including Monterey County, trying to come to terms, agreement could prove elusive. As yet, no single body has been granted legal authority. But Joseph A. Cavanaugh, Ft. Ord Reuse Group coordinator, maintains: “I don’t think there’s going to be gridlock.”

Josh Kirschenbaum, a graduate student in city and regional planning at UC Berkeley who has spent months analyzing California base closure efforts, suspects otherwise.

“The deciding factor is who has land-use control,” he said. “If the base is divided, it will create a planning nightmare.

“These problems,” he added, “will be played out throughout the country.”

A smoother transition is under way at Mather Air Force Base, near Sacramento, though the Air Force has yet to issue its “record of decision” on how the base should be disposed of, said R. Dee Reynolds, executive director of Base Reuse and Realignment, a Sacramento County agency. The document had been expected last fall.

Plans call for the base, scheduled to close in September, to be converted into an air cargo and maintenance facility, parks, a law enforcement training center, wetlands and housing for first-time or low-income buyers. The U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry are expected to maintain current operations.

Area officials have been working on the idea since January, 1989, having talked the Pentagon out of putting Mather on a tentative closure slate two years before.

By the time the decision was made, “there was nothing we could do to undo the situation,” Reynolds said. “We never had that ‘oh, poor me’ hue and cry.”

Yet, the economy has worsened drastically since 1989, when new industry was pouring into Sacramento. Many base workers stuck around, figuring that they could get jobs in the private sector after the close. But now, with jobs scarce, they are being forced to move.

The situation is exacerbated by the simultaneous phasing out of the Sacramento Army Depot, scheduled to close in mid-1995. Mather is scheduled to close in September, and officials hope to have some of the new operations up and running by October.

One glitch is a lawsuit filed by the unincorporated community of Rancho Cordova, which has challenged a plan to convert some barracks into transitional housing for homeless people who have gone through detoxification or job training.

If there is an example of the route best not taken, it is Hamilton Army Airfield in the Marin County town of Novato.

The Air Force left the base almost two decades ago, and it is now being run by the Army. The prime real estate, which has no real military operations, has languished.

Ideas for a solar village, a fish farm, an airport, a homeless shelter and a shopping center have gone nowhere. Some land might become available for recreational facilities and a golf course, but the city and county--both notoriously slow-growth minded--want most of the acreage, at the northern end of San Francisco Bay, to be returned to wetlands.

One Novato official said the government erred years ago in seeking out real estate developers before approaching the community.

“Hamilton is where the government made all its mistakes,” said Dennis Fishwick, a Novato city councilman. “We’re working very hard to see that they’ve learned from it.”

Times researcher Norma Kaufman in San Francisco contributed to this story.

California Base Closures

During the past five years, 18 major military facilities in California have been targeted for closure by the Pentagon. Only one, George Air Force Base, has actually closed. The others will shut in coming months and years.

Legend

& Air Force Installation

$ Army Installation

+ Navy / Marine Installation

* Scheduled to close

** Closed

San Francisco Area

+ Navy / Marine Installation*

+ Mare Island*

+ Moffet Field*

+ Oakland Naval Supply Center*

& Travis AFB

$ Presidio*

+ Alameda Naval Air Station*

Los Angeles Area

+ Long Beach Facilities*

+ Seal Beach Weapons Station

+ El Toro Station*

& Los Angeles AFB

+ Tustin Air Station*

San Diego Area

+ Naval Training Center*

+ Miramar Naval Air Station

+ North Island Naval Air Station

+ Marine Corps Recruit Depot

Sacramento Area

& Mather AFB*

& McClellan AFB*

$ Army Depot*

& Beale AFB

& Castle AFB*

$ Ft. Ord*

+ Naval PG School

$ Presidio Defense Language Institute*

+ Lemoore Naval Air Station

$ Ft. Hunter Liggett

+ China Lake Weapons Center

& Vandenberg AFB

& Edwards AFB

$ Ft. Irwin

& George AFB**

+ Marine Logistics Base

& Norton AFB*

& March AFB

+ Twentynine Palms Marine Base

+ Camp Pendleton Marine Base

Source: Commission on State Finance