Navy Base Setting a Course for Peacetime Prosperity

What a difference peace makes.

Not too many years ago, the Point Mugu Navy base was a super-secret operation that tended to keep its distance from the surrounding community.

But with years of budget cuts in the post-Cold War era, Point Mugu has grown more open and accessible, forming alliances with local politicians and business leaders to help retain jobs and boost Ventura County’s economy.

And now, the base is swinging open its gates to encourage local entrepreneurs to use the base’s scientists and high-tech facilities to help develop products for the civilian marketplace.

“A lot of things used for the defense of the nation can be applied to private industry making commercial products,” said Mike Sullivan, Point Mugu’s technology development manager.

The Navy has signed a three-year agreement with the Ventura County Business Incubator to help nurture ideas from local small businesses that have commercial potential.

“We have computers, we have software engineers, and scientists who can provide consulting at no cost,” Sullivan said. Their time would be paid for by the Office of Naval Research, which has contributed some start-up money to the program to help with defense conversion.

Meanwhile, the county and other local governments are also trying to help with the transition to a peacetime economy by nudging defense contractors to diversify to prepare themselves for cutbacks in military spending.

Under a contract approved by the county Board of Supervisors, a consultant this week outlined an array of techniques for Ventura County’s defense contractors to turn swords into plowshares.

“Most people I’ve met with . . . have not given any serious thought to the civilian marketplace,” consultant Jim Gollub of DRI/McGraw Hill told defense contractors assembled at the Ventura County government center Tuesday.

Gollub mapped out several strategies to accelerate a company’s transition from defense work to new commercial markets.

His blueprint was part of a 96-page study he will present to the county supervisors Tuesday that details Ventura County’s dependence on Pentagon dollars. The supervisors approved a $118,000 contact last year with the San Francisco-based consultant to devise a defense-conversion plan.

Historically, defense contracts and the military bases have pumped in more than $1 billion a year to Ventura County’s economy and account for about 15% of local jobs.

Unlike the huge aerospace and weapons contracts in Los Angeles County, defense dollars directed to Ventura County are primarily associated with the operations of the Point Mugu and Port Hueneme Navy bases, the study said. Between 75% and 80% of defense contracts in the last three years were related to base operations, it said.

The study predicts those military dollars will dwindle from 15% of the county’s economy to 11% by the year 2000. As a result, local defense contractors need to diversify now.

“They are not going to give up making swords,” said Bill Simmons, chairman of the Ventura Defense Partnership. “They are going to be making swords and plowshares.”

The push for a defense-conversion plan has sprung from last year’s efforts to save local bases from being targeted by the nation’s base-closure commission. Simmons said he will be going to cities to ask for money to help the conversion plan get moving.

“It’s a reciprocal arrangement,” he said. “The bases are going to do what they can to strengthen the local economy, and we are going to do what we can to strengthen the bases.”