Consultant: Plan beyond shipyard

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – While the fight is on to save the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a quieter track of post-shipyard planning needs to begin, a consultant who works on redeveloping former military bases says.

“The wise thing to do is to fight the fight,” Anthony Marken, vice president of Boston-based ML Strategies, told the Portsmouth Herald. The redevelopment of the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station in Massachusetts has been one of his projects.

But Marken believes unlike previous base realignment and closure rounds from 1988 on, it will likely be an honorable, but futile, fight.

The shipyard has proven to be one of the best in its industry, completing its missions of nuclear submarine overhauls “better, faster and cheaper,” Marken said. But its “one-dimensional” mission to serve a shrinking submarine fleet was bound to become obsolete sooner or later, he said.

And despite its status as a cost-saver for the Navy, the shipyard is also among the last of the public shipyards, which makes it all the more a target in a climate of unquestioned privatization, Marken said.

Officials say if the shipyard eventually shuts down, it still has contracts for another three to four years, so the timetable could play out as long as six years.

Marken said the time never has been better for communities to deal with the short-term trauma and long-term economic pain of closures, because everyone involved has learned a lot from previous base realignment commission rounds, and redevelopment efforts have improved dramatically with better targeted federal funding and smarter policies.

Marken said the most rational approach for Maine officials would be to “bite the bullet” and move on to the development of a long-term community vision as if the shipyard will close. He cites Pease International Tradeport as an example of smart and successful base transformation with a central authority sticking close to its mission of creating jobs.

Meanwhile, James Brett, president of the Boston-based New England Council, says talk about planning was a “defeatist attitude.” He believes a “compelling case” on national security and economic grounds can be made for the shipyard and other New England sites targeted for closure, such as Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod and submarine facilities in New London and Groton, Conn.

Brett said this round of the base realignment commission needs to be challenged regionally because of the potential $4 billion cumulative hit, 14,000 jobs lost and dubious assumptions about national security.

New England “has 5 percent of the nation’s population, yet we took 50 percent of the proposed [BRAC] job cuts,” Brett said.

Ross Gittell, a University of New Hampshire economic researcher, said emotionally and psychologically, closing the shipyard would be difficult, but “the fundamentals of the local economy are strong,” he said.

Those fundamentals include a highly diversified economy – tourism, high-tech, real estate, and banking and finance to name a few – its proximity to Boston, a highly skilled and educated work force, and a strong quality-of-life reputation that continues to draw workers from other states, Gittell said.