Pentagon Defends $263 Million in Construction at Closing Bases

San Diego’s Naval Training Center opened a new $5.1-million chapel just in time to hold graduation for the facility’s last recruit class. The base closes next year.

The Army’s Fort Sheridan near Chicago officially closed three years ago. Yet construction on a $3.3-million addition to classroom buildings used by the Navy is scheduled to begin soon.

And in Orlando, Fla., the Navy just spent more than $13 million to build a dining hall and personnel center on a base slated to close in two years. Sailors have never set foot in the mess hall; it was turned over to the U.S. Customs Service. And the city is slated to get the other building.

All across the country, even after the government made the tough decisions to close military bases, the Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars for construction on those very bases.

Critics contend many of the expenditures are just wasteful.

“They defeat the whole purpose of closing bases, which is to save money,” said Sean Paige, spokesman for the group Citizens Against Government Waste.

The Pentagon notes that even while it officially terms some bases closed, portions are still used by the service that occupied it, by another branch of the military or by another government agency.

And the Pentagon’s director of installations, Doug Hansen, defending the projects, said many were contracted before bases went on the closure list, the work was being done on land being transferred to other agencies or the Pentagon simply did not want to leave buildings half-finished.

The Defense Department could not provide an exact figure on construction spending for largely defunct bases, but a Pentagon study last year of some of the projects--slated to cost $471 million--showed nearly $263 million of them were continued.

Comparing three years of Pentagon construction budget records with base-closure lists, the Associated Press reviewed a sample of more than $70 million in construction on closing or officially closed bases. The projects ranged from new barracks and renovated gymnasiums to new sewage plants, fire stations and training facilities.

The Pentagon’s base-closure guidelines require the services to evaluate construction projects at facilities slated for closing to determine whether they should go forward.

The Pentagon reported in December that some $974 million in Navy construction was canceled or suspended. Hundreds of millions of Army and Air Force projects also were canceled, officials said.

“We think the screening process worked pretty well,” said Navy Capt. Larry Anderson, a Pentagon engineer who reviewed projects.

Hansen said it sometimes costs more to break contracts than to continue the work. Most of the axed projects had not yet been contracted out.

Experts said military contracts contain termination clauses that would make the government responsible for builders’ costs for materials, labor and profit margin, but they questioned whether the costs would exceed the project’s price tag.

“That sounds a little strange,” said Paul Caggiano at the Coalition for Government Procurement, which studies Pentagon contracting.

The AP’s review found dozens of projects that made it through the screening process.

* At San Diego’s Naval Training Center, the 33,000-square-foot chapel was four months from completion when the base went on the closure list. “They’re going to have to pay for it anyway, so why not complete the structure?” said Lt. Jeff Weimann, a Navy spokesman in San Diego.

The facility was used for the base’s last recruit graduation, but not for religious services--the base’s World War II-era chapel still works fine for that. But Weimann said the new building is used occasionally for meetings, charity events and other functions.

* At Grissom Air Force base near Indianapolis, which ended most operations in October 1994, a $5.8-million fire station and training facility will be built less than two miles from an existing firehouse. The old station works fine, but the Air Force wants a new one on a small segment of the base still used by reservists.

* The Air Force is spending $7.1 million to renovate a gym, barracks and fueling system at a Homestead, Fla., base damaged by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The base officially closed in 1994, but the facilities will be used by reserve units, officials said.

* Since Fort Sheridan officially closed in 1993, large chucks of the base’s lakefront property have been turned over to private developers or to a forest preserve. A training center, for local reservists, is nearly all that’s left of the Army’s operation. But a plan is being discussed to transfer that part of the property to a private developer as well.

Nonetheless, the Army plans to begin taking bids for a $3.3-million classroom expansion soon, and probably break ground in the spring, puzzling at least one local congressman, Rep. John Porter, R-Ill.

“If they built a very expensive expansion and then moved, their attitude is, that’s not their problem,” said Porter’s spokesman, David Kohn.

Doug Benson, chief of facility plans for the Army Reserve Command, said the transfer is still up in the air, but he acknowledged, “It wouldn’t look too good to build and then on grand opening-day move.”

Congress, however, deserves the responsibility for some projects.

For example, lawmakers appropriated $6 million this year to pay for new ovens, lighting and other improvements at a propeller shop that is one of the few remaining facilities at the defunct Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

The House tried unsuccessfully to terminate the funding. Defenders say the facility is one-of-a-kind.