Fighting to Give New Life to Old Ft. Ord Clubhouse

The Bay View Room, the Cypress Room and the Ladies Lounge with the Spanish dance mural are already gone.

The rest of Stilwell Hall--the ballroom where Count Basie and Bing Crosby performed, the taproom where the beer was a nickel a glass and the bar, one of the longest on the West Coast--is still clinging to a Pacific bluff above Monterey Bay, its fate uncertain.

The U.S. Army announced last week that it wanted to raze the sprawling old soldiers’ club in September, to keep it from tumbling down the slope in the next round of winter storms.

Retired military and Monterey County officials are scrambling to save the building and seem to have won a reprieve. But it will require an ambitious relocation project and millions of dollars to permanently rescue the hall erected amid the rolling dunes of this huge Army base, which closed in 1994.

Originally called the Ft. Ord Soldiers’ Club, the hall was later renamed for Joseph Stilwell, the legendary Army general who ordered it built on the eve of World War II.

A place to drink and dance for the rivers of enlisted men who flowed into Ft. Ord by the tens of thousands before they were shipped off to battle, the building was one of the last projects of the federal Works Progress Administration.

Constructed of thick concrete and adobe, it was decorated with murals (since removed) and fireplaces. The floor of the enormous ballroom was laid in teak parquet. The seaside balcony had sweeping coastal views that only fortunes can buy now.

A small part of the hall’s $600,000 cost came from soldiers, who were encouraged to contribute.

Efforts to preserve Stilwell Hall have been underway for years. In 1999, the state Legislature set aside $3 million of the estimated $9 million needed to move the Spanish Mission-style building from its eroding bluff. The remainder was to come from the Army and other public and private sources.

But the state, which is to take over nearly 900 acres of the base’s dunes for a state park, snatched the funding back this spring and stuffed it into the financial hole created by the energy crisis.

The Army, which had earmarked $3 million for Stilwell Hall’s move or demolition, early this year used about $600,000 of that sum to tear down the building’s precariously perched south wing, where the Ladies Lounge and Cypress Room were.

Late last month, the Monterey Presidio military command decided that the rest of the massive 1940s structure would have to go before winter’s approach.

“The Army just can’t be in the position of sitting here and--some night in February in a big storm--watching that slide into the bay,” said Col. Kevin Rice, commandant of the Presidio and the U.S Defense Department’s Foreign Language Center across the bay.

Rice’s decision, spurred by advice from the Army Corps of Engineers, set off howls of protest from the Stilwell Hall Preservation Society, headed by a retired general and former White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta, who once served at Ft. Ord.

The society asked whether architects and engineers of its choosing could evaluate Stilwell’s stability. After walking around the boarded-up hall this week in a chill wind, the team concluded that the building could withstand a few more winters, as long as storm runoff is diverted from the property.

At Rice’s request, army engineers also revisited the site this week.

They too said the main hall could last at least another year but suggested that the foundation of the demolished wing be removed.

That has bought Stilwell more time. Rice said in an interview that he will probably have the wing’s foundation torn out and let the rest of the building remain--for now.

But major questions hover over Stilwell’s future: Where will the money come from to relocate and refurbish the hall? How far should it be moved? Which agency should take it over?

The base closure plans called for the Army to transfer the soldiers’ club to the state as part of the proposed Ft. Ord Dunes State Park.

But hall boosters are now suggesting that the building and 60 acres--or possibly all the land earmarked for the state park--be turned over to Monterey County.

“We are getting no cooperation from the state,” maintained retired Maj. Gen. William Gourley, co-chairman of the Stilwell Hall Preservation Society.

Monterey County Supervisor Dave Potter has a scheme to move the hall to a nearby rail line that the county wants to revive for passenger travel between San Francisco and Monterey Bay. Under that scenario, the soldiers’ club could be converted into a combination train station and visitors center, using various government transportation funds.

“The overwhelming majority of people I know say, ‘Don’t knock down that landmark,’ ” said Potter, who joined this week’s site inspection.

Nodding toward the expanse of coastal dunes abutting the club, he added, “We want to see this place in public use and public ownership as soon as possible.”

Deputy state parks director Roy Stearns said his department has every intention of creating a state park on the dunes.

“The land is going to come to us as Ft. Ord Dunes State Park, and that’s exactly what we’d like it to be,” he said.

He defended the state’s attempts to preserve Stilwell, noting that local funds were never raised to match the legislative appropriation.

“The public support never materialized with enough cash to help us,” he said.

While recognizing the hall’s importance to the troops who socialized there, Stearns said that from a historical perspective, “it’s not seen as one of the gems in the state’s concept of things to save.”

Perhaps, but retired Col. Dan Devlin, a former commanding officer of the Monterey Presidio and member of the preservation society, said he has seen tears roll down the cheeks of a former soldier showing Stilwell Hall to his family.

“It does have that kind of memory value to it. That was their escape,” Devlin said.