THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 3, 1995 TAG: 9504030069
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAVELOCK, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
Glued to a gray two-story office building on U.S. Route 70 in the heart of Marine Corps aviation country is a sign that grabs a passing motorist's attention:
``Allies in Defense of Cherry Point,'' it reads.
The three-foot-tall red letters on white background cover the building's entire facade.
They face the southwest runway at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, giving air crews that take off a glimpse of the community's fight to keep the base growing.
In a rented office sits retired Marine Col. Dave Jones, hired March 22 to be Havelock's point man for all discussions regarding the prize in a cross-border community rivalry with Virginia Beach.
The prize is 160 Navy F/A-18 Hornets that in 1993 had been ordered to Cherry Point when the Pentagon closed their home base at Cecil Field, Fla.
Now the Pentagon wants to move those jets, instead, to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, taking not only the fighters but 5,000 personnel, 12,000 dependents and a $150 million payroll.
The tug of war is on.
Jones, in his $1,500-a-week job only a few days, offered a warm greeting to an unannounced visitor from Hampton Roads inquiring about the community's efforts. But the reception became cool when the visitor said he is a reporter from the Oceana area.
Jones had no statement to make, other than to say that the community has a ``positive outlook'' on getting the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission to change its mind and reorder the F/A-18s back to Cherry Point.
Jones serves as a liaison between the local base-defense group and the state's lobbying team, led by the lawfirm of Ward and Smith in New Bern, N.C. Ward and Smith was hired recently for $50,000 to make Cherry Point's pitch for the Hornets.
Both groups, aided by state and local donations, are working to preserve the base closure commission's decision of 1993, which ordered the Hornets to Cherry Point.
The 200,000 residents of surrounding Craven, Carteret, Pamlico and Jones counties, plus the cities of Newport, Havelock and New Bern, were counting on the economic boost.
It would go a long way toward replacing what the military's normal downsizing has already taken away from the community: the 5,000 Marines who have left since 1986.
Derryl Garner, Newport mayor and president of the base-defense group, laughs at news about Jones' rebuff of the reporter.
``He's doing just what we told him to do,'' said Garner. ``He's brand new in the job and we told him he didn't have to make any statements until he felt ready.''
Despite his brief tenure, Jones already has helped level the playing field for his community by persuading the base closure commission to postpone its hearing on the issue until May 4 in Baltimore.
The session had been planned for April 4 in Birmingham, Ala. But that would have forced the Cherry Point communities to make their plea to the commission a month before Virginia supporters did.
Hampton Roads would have known Havelock's strategy for more than a month. Now the two sides will have equal time to make their pitches.
After a year of taking salvos from Virginia Beach and its political machine - a machine that politicians in North Carolina feel is too closely aligned with the Pentagon - this area is loading its guns to fire back.
The names of Sen. John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican, and Rep. Owen B. Pickett, the Virginia Beach Democrat, are not reverently held in these parts. They played politics with the base closure commission, charges Marion Smith of the governor's Eastern Office in New Bern.
Warner, Pickett and the rest of the congressional delegation from Hampton Roads have pressed the Navy for the past year to move the F/A-18s to Oceana.
Newport's Garner, whose Southern hospitality could not be warmer, would not say he is bitter over the Pentagon's decision to bypass Cherry Point.
But he is disappointed.
``Why did they tell us in 1993 they were coming here if they knew they weren't?'' Garner asked.
Some of the area's heightened expectations are beginning to wane.
In Newport, housing developer Gary Mercer immediately went to work to construct 32 homes in the Woodlands area. Most are now finished. Some remain empty. Plans are on hold to clear an adjacent field for more.
``My parents bought this one,'' said Patrick Murphy, 21, polishing his truck outside the new home in Newport.
``This place is booming now because they think they will get a bunch of new personnel,'' said the part-time community college student and construction worker.
Blockbuster Video erected a building in Havelock, across from Cherry Point's main gate.
``That's a big deal,'' said Murphy, ``We never had one before.''
There were plans to build a Sam's wholesale club in the area, but nothing has been said about it since the base closing issue came to a head in early March.
There was supposed to be a new development across the street from the Carolina Pines housing complex, said Murphy.
``They cleared the fields, but that's all,'' he said.
Carteret County passed a $29 million school bond referendum, based partially on the promise of more military dependents moving into the area, Garner said.
Havelock developer Martin Cieszko announced plans a year ago to construct an apartment complex near the Marine base. Now he has put the project on hold, awaiting the final decision by the base closing commission.
``Do you think they were ever really coming here?'' Garner asked, about the Navy's Hornets. ``Why would they do this to us? I take a man at his word.''
The strategy from now on will be to review information, study tactics and find winning arguments to make before the base closure commission, he said. There are no plans to pack buses with placard-carrying residents to stage a demonstration.
``Not this time,'' said Garner.
``We will be the most aggressive we can be without declaring war,'' he added. ILLUSTRATION: Color file photos by Bill Tiernan, Staff
These jets at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station could share
space with up to 160 Navy F/A-18 Hornets
Officials of New Bern, N.C., believe this scene, at City Hall, could
be economically enlivened if jets from Cecil Field in Florida were
moved to Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station - instead of to
Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSING BASE CLOSURE AND REALIGNMENT COMMISSION
OCEANA NAVAL AIR STATION CHERRY POINT MARINE CORPS AIR STATION
ECONOMY by CNB