It’s Anchors Aweigh in Long Beach

The Navy officially closed its Long Beach installation Monday in quiet resignation, with little ceremony or circumstance.

The galley, where 1,000 sailors once ate together, served its final dinner--Salisbury steak and potatoes--to just a few of them Monday. At the barracks, sailors packed belongings and locked doors as they left. In front of the waterfront headquarters, the flagpole stood with no colors.

“It’s real hard for a lot of people,” said Cmdr. Lionel L. Cheri, one of the officers overseeing the shutdown. “I’ve been around a while. It is sort of sad to see this place close.”

It was the last day of work for about 100 civilians, Navy officials said. After boxing up some odds and ends, they drove to the main gate, where a guard was to scrape the blue “Department of Defense” stickers off their windshields. Some workers planned to retire or open businesses. Some filed for unemployment benefits. Others didn’t know what they would do.

The fate of the 170-acre property also remains unresolved. What seemed a clear decision by the Long Beach City Council to raze the base and turn it into a cargo container terminal has turned into a bitter feud in recent weeks, as preservationists and park users have pleaded with City Hall and the Pentagon to spare it.

Commissioned in 1942 as a launching pad for U.S. forces in World War II, the station provided food, shelter and support to thousands of sailors en route to and from the Pacific theater. The sprawling facility includes a swimming pool (now drained), a gymnasium (now locked), four lighted softball fields (now empty), and a cluster of International-style buildings designed in part by the late Paul R. Williams, a noted African American architect.

“It’s the price we pay for winning the Cold War,” said Capt. John Pickering, the commander of the Naval Shipyard next to the base.

Now, a few administrative offices at the base will be transferred to the shipyard, which will close next fall. A few workers will remain at the Naval Station to distribute its spare equipment to other military bases until mid-November.

Supporters of saving the base have not presented a formal plan for using the facilities, or said how the city should pay to maintain them or bring them up to environmental and safety standards.

City officials say their plan to offer the land to the Port of Long Beach, which would pay $200 million to build a container terminal on it and lease it to a steamship company operated by the Chinese government, would create up to 650 jobs and generate about $1 million in annual revenue for the city and $13 million a year for the port to pay off construction costs. The plans are being reviewed by the Navy.

“We’ve always been known as a Navy town,” said Mayor Beverly O’Neill. “We really are in transition. I don’t think that has sunk in for a lot of people. It’s a day of change for us.”

Few cities have experienced the effects of military shrinkage as severely as Long Beach. Including aerospace layoffs and the loss of the Naval Station and shipyard, the city has lost about 50,000 jobs since 1990, city officials say.

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Since the Pentagon first put its Long Beach station on the base closure list, civilian and military personnel have known that the last day would eventually come.

“We’d hear a rumor that Long Beach was going to be saved. People would get their hopes up, and then everyone would get depressed again. I’ve been depressed for about six months,” said Kathy Ortega, 53, of San Pedro, a counselor at the family services center who cleaned out her desk Monday. “Some people have been in denial. They keep thinking some miracle is going to happen, and they’re not going to lose their jobs.”

But reality had been creeping in for the past week, as workers held award ceremonies and farewell dinners. The last services at the chapel were held Sunday. The Navy had planned to raise the flag one last time Sunday, but the rope broke.

At the galley Sunday, a woman who had scrubbed tables and prepared food for 30 years asked her superiors if she could keep a bucket she had used, supervisor Sukie Young said.

“To her, it’s a memory,” Young said. “I told her she could keep the uniform too.”