City Wants Pentagon to Close Naval Station

As the Pentagon prepares a list of military bases it wants to close, communities throughout California are pleading to have their bases spared. Not Concord.

Officials in this middle-class suburb 30 miles northeast of San Francisco have asked the Pentagon to close the 12,800-acre Concord Naval Weapons Station so it can be turned over for private development.

“It’s a jewel just waiting to be developed,” said Nicholas Virgallito, president and chief executive of the Concord Chamber of Commerce.

Officials view the site, valued at $1 billion, as one of the last largely undeveloped stretches in the San Francisco Bay Area.

City planners have tentative proposals for 13,500 homes, a shopping center, a light-industrial park, libraries, schools and thousands of acres of grassy parkland.

Former Concord Mayor Dan Helix said that using the acreage for homes might help ease the spiraling price of housing in this city of 121,000.

“The great American dream is owning your own home, but it’s becoming impossible,” said Helix, a retired Army major general. “This property could help change that.”

The Pentagon must release its list by May 16, beginning a review process by a presidential commission that will lead to a final decision by President Bush and Congress. California has more bases than any other state.

“The base is a relic,” said Concord Mayor Laura Hoffmeister, left from the days when Northern California had other Navy bases, now closed. “We could do great things there.”

The 5,170-acre inland portion of the base has been unused since the late 1990s. The 7,630-acre tidal area, where activity has dwindled, remains the military’s only West Coast port for moving large quantities of ammunition, making that section’s closure less likely.

Even if the Concord weapons station were on the closure list, the process for the city to gain control would be long, complex, and politically controversial.

The slow-growth movement, a powerful force in Northern California, is likely to oppose large-scale residential development.

“When the list comes out, communities that are losing bases will be going through the four stages of grief: denial, anger, compromise and, finally, acceptance,” said James Forsberg, director of planning and economic development for Concord. “We figure the Navy will be eager to work with us instead.”

The base, a former homeport for warships, is no longer the hub of activity it was during World War II and the Vietnam War.

Civilian employment at the station once exceeded 3,000 workers. As recently as 1994, the station employed 1,074 civilians. Now the base has about 110 civilian workers.

Only five ships are expected to be loaded with ammunition at the station’s piers on Suisun Bay this year.

The 220 ammunition shelters of so-called Magazine City in the inland area are empty. Cows graze on the tall grass; tule elk roam the rolling hills.

“There has got to be a better use of this prime piece of property than a bunch of cows,” said Helix, a member of the California Council on Base Support and Retention assembled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Once the weapons station was a round-the-clock operation, with 330 Marines assigned as guards.

Now the buildings on the inland portion are a ghost town. The hospital, chapel and officer housing are locked. The baseball field is unused.

The current condition of the inland portion of the base, said City Manager Ed James, represents “the worst possible scenario” for Concord: no jobs, no revenue and continued deterioration of the existing facilities.

The Concord City Council asked the retention council to recommend closing the weapons station. Instead, the retention council’s final report merely notes the station’s presence without arguing that it should be kept open.

After talking with Concord officials, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) wrote to the Pentagon recommending the closure of the weapons station but retention of another base: Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield.

In 1999, military and city officials began discussing the possibility of allowing development on the inactive part of the Concord base. But the heightened security precautions invoked after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ended those discussions.

The waterfront portion of the base, where deep-draft cargo ships are loaded with ammunition headed for forward deployed Navy ships and land troops, is under the control of the Army.

There is a monument tended by the National Park Service at the waterfront to commemorate the explosions of July 17, 1944, that killed 320 sailors, two-thirds of them African Americans, at what was then called Port Chicago.

The disaster led to a boycott by other sailors and a court-martial tinged with the racial discrimination that was a part of the segregated military of that era. It also led to changes in safety procedures, and there has never been a repeat of the 1944 explosions.

City officials say the best chance for gaining part of the base lies in the 5,170-acre inland portion that is unused and is outside the “blast arc” area that would be damaged if the station ever again suffered an explosion on the loading docks. Homes have already been built to the fence.

Ships loaded here provide firepower to ships and troops in the Western Pacific, including those on alert for possible conflict with North Korea.

“This is a force projection platform for that area,” said Army Lt. Col. David R. McClean, who runs the Concord station.

If the Pentagon does not list the tidal portion of the base on its closure list, it is scheduled for a five-year, $27.5-million upgrade to provide better security and improved piers.

As the day for the list to be unveiled approaches, Concord officials are cautiously optimistic that the Pentagon will agree that the base should be closed.

“We’re hoping the Pentagon says, ‘Sounds good to us,’ ” said Linda Best, executive with the Contra Costa Economic Partnership.