Fort Meade Awaits Bigger Gains After BRAC

By Mark R. Smith



While many military communities around the United States nervously awaited their fate when the 2005 Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) recommendations were announced recently, there was a different type of anticipation around Fort Meade.

While the news was great for the state and the post - Maryland fared better than any other state in the country, as far as adding jobs goes - figuring out how to accommodate another 5,300 people on the fourth largest military installation in the country, with a population of 109,000 and a workforce of 39,000, is now on the agenda.

When those numbers are coupled with the additional 6,000 to 8,000 that were already expected to come to Fort Meade before the BRAC announcement, questions arose concerning offering ample housing, proper infrastructure, capacity in schools and health care, among others.

With the possibility of an additional 13,000-plus people eventually working, playing and living in and around Fort Meade, the release of the comptroller general's analysis of the national BRAC recommendations on July 1 will be of keen interest.



Off the Bat

Maryland earned a net gain of 9,293 civilian and military personnel through BRAC, which is slated to save U.S. taxpayers $50 billion during the next two decades if fully implemented. The state fared better than any other in not only attracting new personnel (Aberdeen Proving Ground was another big winner, gaining a proposed 2,176 new positions), but preserving workforce at existing installations.

This is just the latest step in the evolution of Fort Meade, which "is now a high tech defense campus," said Rep. Ben Cardin (D-3) in a recent press conference at the new West County Library in Odenton.

The new BRAC numbers bear that statement out. Of the 5,361 new positions that were announced, more than 3,500 are slated to be in the high tech and professional fields, though there are no other specifics on the 2,915 civilians, 1,764 contractors and 682 military personnel that are expected to come to the post. The additions will require an estimated $300 million in construction.

Agencies among those recommended to move to the installation include media-related entities such as Soldiers magazine, the Naval Media Center, Army Broadcasting-Soldier Radio/TV, the Air Force News Agency and the Army Hometown News Service, and the American Forces Information Service. These relocations will create a Department of Defense Media Activity at Fort Meade for all command information products.

"The transformation of Fort Meade has been going on for two decades — it is being done with great sensitivity," Cardin said, noting that 85% of the suggested BRAC changes are expected to take place. "This is not the beginning or the end of the process. What we need is a strategy that gives us the best chance for the changes to be implemented."

Overall, the reaction on post is one of elation, of course. "Fort Meade is extremely excited about today's announcement on base realignment and closure," said Col. John Ives, the soon-to-retire installation commander. "We are looking at the gain numbers that have been proposed for the installation."

Ives said that Fort Meade is standing "ready to support [the recommendations] that move forward for presidential and congressional approval later this year. We are confident that these recommendations will bring positive growth to the Fort Meade installation and surrounding communities of Anne Arundel, Howard and Prince George's counties."



Ripple Effect

Fort Meade is already a huge economic engine for the region, contributing $4 billion to the state economy. Clemon Wesley, president and chair of the Fort Meade Alliance, thinks the BRAC announcement will start it revving higher soon.

"We expect that [the BRAC news] will stimulate business growth in the area," Wesley said, adding that, "There are a lot of projects in the works that we expect to be impacted by the influx that are not associated with BRAC that we estimated will bring an additional 6,000 to 8,000 more jobs to Fort Meade during the next few years" within the intelligence community.

He expects the reverberations to be considerable. "This will impact the hotel market, retail and other types of businesses," Wesley said.

"The road network is another consideration, especially Route 175," Wesley continued, noting that the county is finishing a study on that artery now that should be done by the end of June.

"We anticipate they will widen it," he said. "In the last few years the focus has been on Route 32, but now it's done. The focus is coming back to Route 175 and making improvements there."

And while some have voiced concerns to the contrary, Wesley thinks the local school system will be able handle the influx of new students. "The elementary schools in the area are not at capacity, so we don't think that will be a problem," he said.

Figuring out where all of these new workers are going to live could be a bit more complicated. Picerne Military Housing's upgrade that started at Fort Meade in January 2003 is underway. It is slated for completion in 2012, but, "If we need to build more [units], it may take longer," said Bill Mulvey, Picerne vice president of communications.

The answer to that question will be determined by a new housing market analysis that is not ready yet, Mulvey said. "That will also tell us what has happened in the surrounding areas during the past couple of years and could give us a new total number of family units needed on post. But we don't know if the number will rise or fall from [the current] 3,170."

A total of 483 units will be up by the end of this year. "The new housing we are building is only for military families. Most of the new people working on post at Fort Meade are civilians, and they often live off post," he said, adding that the older housing that is currently being marketed is inhabited by retirees, single soldiers, active duty military families and federal government workers.



Major Numbers

Richard Clinch, director of economic research at the University of Baltimore, said, "It is not a surprise that jobs are coming to Fort Meade, given the importance that has been placed on homeland security in the last couple of years."

Estimating that the economic impact of the influx will be roughly between $700 million to $1 billion in Anne Arundel County alone, Clinch said that, "These are mainly high-paying jobs, so this is all good for the county, region and state economy. Fort Meade is gated and has a large amount of available land just off Route 95, so there are tremendous opportunities there."

Clinch also said that, like Virginia, Maryland is also benefiting from the out migration of government operations from D.C. "It's hard to have a secure facility in D.C., since it is an urban environment. That is part of what was behind moving Walter Reed Army Hospital to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Urban areas are considered targets."

Anirban Basu, chairman and CEO of Sage Policy Group, also of Baltimore, also said that the state and the Baltimore area "fared remarkably well" in the BRAC and that the thousands of high paying jobs "will only stand to substantially improve the performance of a local economy that has already been expanding smartly in recent quarters."

His main question concerned where the transplants are going to live and how their presence will affect the market.

"Moving forward, one would expect that this would have a positive effect on housing values," Basu said. "The inventory of available homes is already quite limited and this will place additional pressure on the available stock. Workforce housing is a real issue, not just for home ownership factors or from the perspective of shared prosperity, but also for nitty-gritty economic development reasons. This means the bubble would be less likely to burst in the Baltimore region."



Look Inside

But Steve Oxman thinks that accommodating new workers who move to the area to work at Fort Meade should be the secondary approach, given his vantage point.

The president of Oxko Corp. in Landover and founder of the Anne Arundel Tech Council said that job one is "employing the pool of the approximately 500 underemployed IT workers in Anne Arundel County who were adversely affected by the bust of the dot-com bubble" earlier this decade, "since they already live here" and the county wouldn't need to offer additional services as they would to new residents.

Next on the agenda is the review of the Department of Defense recommendations by a nine-member independent BRAC Commission. The Commission, chaired by former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi, must submit its recommendations to President Bush by Sept. 8.

The President then forwards the recommendations to Congress, which has 45 legislative days to act on the report. Under the BRAC statute, actions to close or realign an installation must be initiated within two years after Congressional approval, with completion in six years.

In the meantime, the various issues that surround Fort Meade will also be addressed. Cardin and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-2) stressed that, while the horizon looks rosy, the deal is not quite done.

"There was much fear in Washington over BRAC," said Ruppersberger, noting that a lot of politicians felt they would be blamed if their jurisdiction lost an installation. "Some people in New Jersey lost an entire base and they will not want to see Fort Meade get all of these jobs.

"We have to make sure that we plan for growth, so we have a place for all of these defense contractors to work. But," Ruppersburger said, "if we do this right, it could have a great impact on our community."