Ex-military towns wary of BRAC’s power

STRATFORD, Conn. – There was a time when the shelves at the South Main Package Store were filled with spirits for the Army machinists to take home after work. The price tags are still there, clinging to empty shelf space.

These days, Alice Connolly doesn’t stock much in her family business: 6 liters of vodka, a few scattered bottles and boxes of table wine, a half-full cooler of beer.

It has been that way since 1997, when the Base Realignment and Closure commission closed the Stratford Army Engine Plant across the street, wiping out 1,400 jobs.

The Pentagon’s Office of Economic Assistance publishes a guide to recovering from base closure and highlights success stories in which new industry blossoms.

“You know what you can do with those brochures?” said Janice Paige, a convenience store owner down the road from the plant. “Rip ’em up and throw ’em away.”

Stratford is not a success story.

And for officials fighting to keep their bases open this year, Stratford represents their biggest fears.

“We’re not going to be sold a bill of goods by people who want to tell a happy story,” said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who was among a team of representatives that traveled to Boston last week trying to save Groton’s submarine base and its more than 8,000 jobs. “There hasn’t been a job yet created in Stratford as a result of that shutdown.”

The Pentagon’s base closure plans would result in a net loss of 29,005 military and civilian jobs nationwide. And while defense officials stand ready with economic aid and assistance, local leaders in towns hit hardest by the recommendations are concerned.

“It doesn’t take much to understand what $350 million in payroll means,” said Portsmouth, N.H., City Manager John Bohenko, whose city lies just over the border from Kittery, Maine, where the naval shipyard stands to be closed. “And it could affect the local hardware store, the local diner, the hospitality industry. It’s one of those things that has a macro impact.”

Dozens of congressional and state leaders from around the country have gone before the BRAC commissioners over the past several days and pleaded their case. More are scheduled to do so before the commissioners issue their recommendations to President Bush this fall.

Besides the Portsmouth shipyard in Maine, the Pentagon has recommended closing a Defense Finance and Accounting Service center in Limestone and removing all aircraft from Brunswick Naval Air Station.

BRAC spokesman C. James Schaefer said officials who are counting on their economic outlook to win over the commission shouldn’t be too optimistic.

“They have to realize the commission is going to put a priority on military value first and foremost,” Schaefer said.

Paige doesn’t think that’s fair. Her Stratford neighborhood built itself around the factory where tank engines were built for years. She hopes the town successfully redevelops the massive factory but notes that it has been 10 years since the BRAC decision, and the Army still hasn’t turned over the property to the town.

About 28 percent of abandoned military property has not been turned over to local officials for redevelopment, according to a Government Accountability Office report this year, leaving 49,000 acres unused nationwide.

Fort Ritchie at one time was the biggest employer in Washington County, Md. But the base closed in 1998 and, because of court wrangling and other holdups, land has yet to be transferred to the state.

“It has made our area go stagnant,” grocer Greg DeLauter said. “We’re in a county that’s getting all these metropolitan people coming up out of D.C. In a county that’s exploding with growth, our area is just stagnant.”

About 1,400 jobs disappeared with the base, the GAO said, and about 350 jobs in town quickly faded, development officials said. Rich Rook, director of the county’s quasi-public development agency, said he hopes the Army will turn over the property in about six months.

The biggest obstacle to transferring property is environmental cleanup, according to the GAO. The military is obligated to clean the property, though squabbling about how much cleanup to expect is common. Thirty-four bases closed since 1988 are on the Superfund list of worst toxic waste sites, and none is completely cleaned yet.

Groton’s submarine base is among at least seven facilities proposed for closure that are polluted, and the Pentagon has estimated it will cost more than $700 million to clean them. Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard are among the polluted bases.

Mark Barnhart, former Stratford town manager, said he got all the development booklets and advice from the Pentagon when the engine plant was being closed.

“They certainly have had instances that they’ve bandied about where things have worked well,” Barnhart said. “It’s a little harder to turn an older industrial brownfield into something positive.”

DeLauro said she believes Connecticut made a strong pitch to keep the base open based on its military value. But she said officials aren’t kidding themselves about the stakes.

“I think people pretty much understand the sense of what will happen if this closes down,” she said.