Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 26, 1993 TAG: 9306260083
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK DORSEY LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: CHARLESTON, S.C. LENGTH: Long
In hindsight, Charleston should have done a lot of things differently to keep the Navy in town.
Like building tunnels under the Cooper and Ashley rivers instead of bridges over them, so even the biggest warships could sail into port. Like fighting to prevent a modern submarine base from locating down the coast in Georgia. Like doing more to balance the bad hand dealt the community by Mother Nature - the relatively shallow navigation channel, the fast-moving current, the yo-yoing tides.
Charleston didn't do those things, and Friday the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission in Washington voted to recommend that the Navy pull out of the Charleston Naval Shipyard, costing the city 5,771 civilian and 58 military jobs. If the Navy ships out of its 65 facilities in the port completely,it will take 35,000 military and civil defense jobs with it.
But for all the city could have done, Charleston leaders say, the bigger lesson from the nation's post-Cold War military cuts may be this: The community never should have depended so heavily on the Navy to begin with.
That's the assessment of a man who has seen the painful scenario played out before - in Selma, Ala., where the Air Force closed a base in 1977, and in Beeville, Texas, where the Navy pulled out in 1988.
"I just don't think you can control the defense industry," says James D. Bradley, who tried to do just that in Selma and in Beeville - and now, as chief executive officer of the Charleston area's Trident Chamber of Commerce.
Today's defense cuts should be a warning to other defense-dependent communities, such as Norfolk, Va., where the Navy's economic impact is about five times what it is in Charleston.
Hampton Roads, Va., is one military community that is showing signs of weaning itself from single-industry dominance: The area has lost 12,000 federal government jobs in the past three years, but has managed to add that many back in the private sector, said Virginia Rep. Owen Pickett, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
Charleston, making up for lost time, is at work trying to match numbers like those.
In place of defense, Charleston hopes to hitch its economic hopes to the health-care industry, linked to Charleston Medical University Hospital, Bradley said. It also hopes to attract German luxury-car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz to the area. With the Charleston Naval Shipyard gone, the city will have some prime waterfront industrial area to offer.
But while Charleston may finally be ready to diversify, a force beyond the community's control threatens to stand in its way: the Navy.
How soon?
If all 65 military installations close, timing is key to a recovery, Charleston leaders say. The Navy wants to padlock its gates quickly - within 18 months to two years, according to some.
One argument holds that such speed could send the local economy into a tailspin. It would be better, the argument goes, to close the facilities over a longer period of time, allowing the economy to absorb the losses more gradually.
On the other hand, a quick and decisive closure may help, some in the community say. It would allow economic development leaders to seek out industries and locate them on the former Navy land before the pain of massive layoffs sets in.
One Charleston businessman who says he is fed up with the base closure issue, and who doesn't believe the dire consequences will result if the Navy leaves, puts it more bluntly:
"Give 'em 1,000 days to get out, then cut your losses, spin around and get going again," he says. "These days it's probably easier to get rid of the Navy than to keep them."
In practice, the second scenario is unlikely. Unless, that is, Congress steps in.
"The problem is that the process to get access to the property is so cumbersome and takes so long that it is not very effective," Bradley said.
For example, it took nearly 10 years of negotiations before an industrial park finally opened on the the Air Force property in Selma that Bradley saw vacated in 1977.
The theory behind the base closing process is that the defense department and the federal government will turn over vacant property to the local community to be developed.
But the localities must pay for it. That allows the Pentagon to show a profit, of sorts, from its base closings.
In Charleston's case, the property - more than 20,000 acres of it - isn't cheap. It's among the most valuable in South Carolina. Some of it is absolutely gorgeous - so attractive, in fact, that if the timing is right, it could help Charleston survive the base closures.
`Little or no concern'
When Congress wrote the law establishing the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission's duties in 1988, the Berlin Wall, communism and the united Soviet Union still existed.
Now that the world has changed and the speed with which the United States wants to cut defenses has accelerated, there are a number of people - lots of them in Charleston - who believe the commission's responsibilities haven't been updated to keep pace with the changing times.
What money Congress has provided for recovery doesn't begin to approach the needs, Charleston officials say.
"The Navy very frankly told us point blank that the impact of the local community is of little or no concern to them," said Bradley.
In the eight points the commission uses to weigh the merits of a single closing, the economic effect on a community is way down the list, Bradley said.
Likewise, the efforts Congress made to take politics out of the base closure process haven't worked either, Bradley claims.
Charleston has been criticized for adopting a strategy that drew the commission's attention to other military facilities, such as those in Hampton Roads. It has defended that move as a necessary evil to find a level playing field in this process.
"I think again that the legislation that created the commission inadvertently built into it the great possibility that would occur; pitting one community against another," Bradley said.
"But basically it is called the `base-closure commission' and they are in the business of closing bases. Your only option is to point out deficiencies in other areas."
by CNB