THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 20, 1994 TAG: 9406200026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940620 LENGTH: Long
\ They've rolled out the welcome mat in Havelock, N.C., throwing barbecues and helping find homes for the people who will work for the big new industry that's planning on moving to town.
And they didn't even need to lobby or cajole the bureaucrats to get it. Havelock was handpicked for a windfall, and it comes just in time: The tobacco industry, which the region depends on heavily, is ailing.
{REST} But none could imagine a more unlikely savior. The military cuts that are threatening the state economy in California and throwing thousands out of work in communities like Charleston, S.C., are promising a boom for Havelock.
The Defense Department is consolidating as it slashes, and a big chunk of the Navy air force is scheduled to move to nearby Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station. It's a chunk that Jacksonville, Fla., is losing and that Virginia Beach - worried Oceana may someday become redundant - is hoping to wrest away.
But as the law now stands, Cherry Point in the next five years will gain 200 of the Navy's most modern jets, the plane that will ensure the future of whatever base wins it - the F/A-18 Hornet.
Supporters of Oceana Naval Air Station have their work cut out for them. Even as the people around Cherry Point make way for the prized Hornets, a few point to all the room they could spare for Oceana's planes, too.
With the Hornets come 15,000 people - 5,000 Navy personnel and their families. The folks now living in the area of Cherry Point - 200,000 of them, in places like Havelock, just outside the gates; in Newport, where builders already are adding 92 homes in anticipation; and in New Bern, a picturesque city 18 miles to the north - are welcoming their new neighbors with open arms.
The area is starting to get a hint of what's coming: 1,000 new employees already are relocating to the Cherry Point Naval Aviation Depot with the closing of the Naval Aviation Depot in Pensacola, Fla. Also on the way are former employees of the Charleston, S.C., Naval Shipyard.
Both installations were closed under action by the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, the civilian panel that advises the president and Congress on how to trim the defense infrastructure in the wake of the Cold War.
Still, what they're seeing now around Cherry Point is just a trickle compared with the arrival of the F/A-18 community from Cecil Field near Jacksonville, scheduled to be complete by 1999.
Said one New Bern pundit, ``I think most people around here want to be greedy and take them all. There are few naysayers in this area.''
Added Newport Mayor Derryl Garner, ``If we get the ball, we will run with it, score and win. That's the attitude here.''
Brenda Wilson, president of the Havelock Chamber of Commerce, has been helping smooth the move from Pensacola.
``We had 19 busloads of civil service people come here to see what we had to offer,'' Wilson said. ``We took them all over, showing them the whole area - not just Havelock. There was a reception by developers and a pig pickin'.''
Chamber officials had to overcome some ill will among the workers, which they blamed on angry exchanges during Pensacola's unsuccessful fight to keep its depot open.
But the Pensacolans, soon to become Tar Heels, are starting to feel welcome around Cherry Point.
``One of them even asked if we are going to have a place called `Cherry-Cola,' '' Wilson said.
In Virginia Beach, Oceana boosters say largely rural eastern North Carolina cannot handle all the people coming its way. They say urban Virginia Beach could.
But given the opportunity to expand its industrial base through the defense dollar, residents around Cherry Point say, there is no doubt roads, schools and homes will be ready for the newcomers' arrival.
A new middle school already is on the drawing boards and an additional elementary school is being talked about in Havelock, said Mary Kurek, executive director of the city's Chamber of Commerce.
``There's a lot of work ahead,'' Kurek said. ``I think the infrastructure is big on anybody's mind who is doing the planning. But planning has been going on for years now.''
Confirm the Florida aviators are truly coming to Cherry Point and the new facilities will be built, community leaders say. But they worry about making too many plans when there is a potential for delays or changes with another base-closing commission convening in 1995.
Oceana boosters will be there lobbying for change, arguing that their base already has the room and their community the infrastructure to house the F/A-18 community.
``I have some concerns about the effort the area could go to . . . and the money we could invest to accommodate the growth,'' said Garner, the Newport mayor. ``It seems to be a very unfair thing.''
Garner retired last year from the Cherry Point Naval Aviation Depot after 40 years, and knows well how the government can work. He's been mayor for the past 17 years and has seen Newport profit from the military at Cherry Point. Of the town's 2,782 residents, 560 are employed at the military installation.
``After seeing the full impact of what may develop, then we can proceed, but we'll do so cautiously. That is the way we do things here,'' Garner said. ``We know that in politics and in the decisions of government, things can change overnight - a national emergency, for example. So you try to roll with the punches.''
It makes sense for the Navy to send its planes to Cherry Point as it winds through the difficult process of downsizing worldwide, according to politicians and business leaders in eastern North Carolina.
The 52-year-old base is surrounded on the west and south by the 167,000-acre Croatan National Forest, home to bear, wild turkey and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.
The forest provides natural protection from the threat of the high-rise buildings and densely populated housing developments that Oceana's critics have used against the Virginia Beach base.
Likewise, the natural barriers of the Neuse River to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the south ensure there will be less pressure from future encroachment.
Within this buffer, the Marine Corps operates the largest of its seven air bases. From the Cherry Point airfield, built in a wagon-wheel design with four 8,000-foot runways as spokes, the Marines operate 120 planes - AV-8B Harrier jump jets, radar-jamming EA-6B Prowlers and C-130 transports.
In combination, two of the runway spokes become a 3-mile-long airfield that can accommodate any aircraft, even the beefy space shuttle.
``It's unique in that we can take off from the center and land toward the center,'' said Marine Corps Maj. Don Kapell, the base's public affairs officer. ``If conditions are favorable, we can send airplanes to the four winds in a heartbeat.''
Already the biggest Marine air base, Cherry Point would become the largest among Navy and Marine Corps bases if military consolidation continues under the base-closing commission.
The commission decision in 1993 to move Navy planes to a Marine station is consistent with Congress' push to make all service branches work together more, reducing the cost of maintaining separate installations.
Another example of this move is helicopter training, now consolidated at Fort Rucker, Ala. Studies are being conducted on whether to order the same for jet pilots.
``You are likely to see arrangements you wouldn't ordinarily see, including joint basing, perhaps,'' said Tom McNaugher, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, a think tank for defense issues.
``There is this growing concern that the defense budget is coming down,'' McNaugher said. ``Procurement budgets already have come down very sharply, but the basing structure, or infrastructure, has come down much more slowly and it is just going to kill the services if they don't go after it.
``To save that money, they may be willing to do things we never would have expected.''
One question is whether lawmakers can accept the resulting job losses in their home districts. ``More and more blood is on the floor and Congress' tolerance of more base closing gets to be problematic,'' McNaugher said.
Decisions made next summer will be critical for the Cherry Point community. That is when the Navy will announce its recommendations to the 1995 base-closing commission.
If the decision by the 1993 commission stands, sending 11 squadrons of F/A-18s to Cherry Point, the base's future - and the region's economic well-being - are assured.
The 9,316 Marines and 4,891 civilians now employed by the base earned $469.5 million in salaries last year. In addition, the base spent $704.6 million on various goods and services - more than $500 million of it in the four-county area surrounding the base.
Kapell, the base spokesman, calls the area delightful, affordable and a good bet for expansion.
``I don't want to get political either way, but it is just a plain fact that we don't have some of the encroachment problems you have in the Norfolk area with the population and stuff,'' he said. ``The forest keeps development away from here. All of Croatan and Havelock are in the middle of the forest.''
Residents predict things can only get better with Cherry Point's growth. But there are some obstacles before that can happen.
The biggest appears to be the need for a new auxiliary field for training pilots. The one in use now, at Bogue Field to the south, is 4,400 feet long - too short for pilots learning to fly the F/A-18, Kapell said. Safety requirements call for at least 6,000 feet of runway.
Some have suggested building a new field inside the Croatan National Forest. The National Forest Service, in a statement released in May, said that would raise serious environmental concerns.
``Remember, we have the red-cockaded woodpecker down here and he's a pretty powerful bird,'' Mayor Garner said.
``This will be very, very controversial if it goes forward,'' added Lillian Hillman, warden of the Croatan National Forest district. ``I don't mind that people oppose it or advocate it. My concern is that factual information . . . be provided.''
Also critical is a final environmental impact statement, due out in 1995. It is called the ``heart and soul'' of base-expansion efforts. It will determine what wetlands will be affected, as well as what the community will need in the way of upgraded water systems, sewers, schools and highways.
Critics of the expansion, most of them from Virginia Beach, hope to exploit another stumbling block - the high cost of making room for the F/A-18s at Cherry Point. Some estimates put it as high as $450 million. The Navy has told Congress the cost will be just $170 million.
At least nine new aircraft hangars will have to be built, along with taxiways, ramps and simulators, according to the critics.
And troubling some Navy leaders is the lack of jobs for spouses in the region as two-income households become the norm rather than the exception across society.
``I'm just concerned that a young second class petty officer and his wife aren't going to make ends meet without extra jobs,'' said retired Rear Adm. Fred Metz of Virginia Beach, a former director of the carrier and air station program for the Navy.
``I'm also concerned these young people will find themselves having to live in trailer parks down there,'' he said.
Chamber president Wilson, also a real estate saleswoman, denies there is a housing shortage. She points to the construction of a 140-unit apartment complex nearby plus other housing starts in Newport and elsewhere.
In January, when she last surveyed the area, there were 1,300 housing units for sale in the four-county area. The average sales price in New Bern was $105,000, $78,000 in Havelock and in the mid-$60,000 to low $70,000 range in Carteret County. The highest price, in the $190,000 range, was at Atlantic Beach on the barrier island.
Wilson also disputed there is a job shortage.
``We hire a lot of military spouses who bring new ideas to our schools,'' she said. She predicted that more people will create more jobs.
New Bern Mayor Tom Bayliss, 49, is a newcomer to Carolina politics, elected to his first political office late last year. But he's seasoned to the farmer's hardscrabble life in this part of the country and he knows firsthand the benefits Cherry Point has brought the region.
``I'm a good example,'' he said. ``I'm an old country boy. I grew up on a farm, got married in the 11th grade and quit school in 12th grade. If it wasn't for Cherry Point, I won't say I would never have had success, but it would have been tougher.''
Bayliss entered the apprentice school at the Naval Aviation Depot, starting on a road that got him back on track and interested in education again. He and his wife of 31 years have since raised two children. Bayliss eventually graduated from East Carolina University with a physics degree and now owns his own electric supply company, with offices in New Bern, Wilmington and Charleston, S.C.
``That base has touched a lot of people's lives down here,'' he said. ``You (in Hampton Roads) have a much bigger area and may not be as dependent on it as we are. We have been dependent on the tobacco growing industry, and you know what's happening there.''
With cigarette-smoking under attack as a health hazard and on the decline in the United States, Bayliss predicts Cherry Point's expansion will have an even deeper impact on his neighbors.
The expansion, and economic initiatives by North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., offer new hope to a once isolated region.
``Look, tobacco is taking one hell of a whipping,'' Bayliss said. ``Not only is that going to cause some economic problems, but eastern North Carolina has only just begun to get the rest of the state's attention.''
Outside attention has been slow to reach Newport, the smallest of the bedroom communities around Cherry Point. But even at the Garden Club, where they're proud of the town's rural character, it's a welcome change.
``Right up there where I live, this lady is selling some property where they are making a new housing development for all the military people who are coming,'' Nell Edwards said as she plopped another pot of pansies in the ground on a warm spring day.
Not since before the Civil War, when it was called Shepherdsville and Union troops burned the old Baptist church down, has Newport been on the edge of a boom. Even the four-member police department and the all-volunteer fire and rescue crew don't seem to mind.
One reason is that Newport is accustomed to military families. They usually come here after tiring of the long waiting list for government housing closer to Cherry Point.
``It's a comfortable community,'' said Garden Club member Lois Alexander, who retired from the Naval Aviation Depot in 1980. ``And you would think we would start protesting about all these people coming here. But we won't.''
{KEYWORDS} BASE CLOSING MILITARY BASE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AIR BASE CHERRY POINT
by CNB