Gen. Byrnes, Fort Monroe - another angle

[moodforaday]

I've absolutely no idea if this is related or not, but it's another angle on Fort Monroe I haven't been aware of:

Environmental cleanup of Fort Monroe could tally $1 billion
A group studying the possible redevelopment of the Army post foresees legal and costly challenges.

HAMPTON -- The group created by the City Council to guide redevelopment at Fort Monroe if the base closes learned Monday that the process could be costly and contentious.

Cleaning up unexploded weapons could cost as much as $1 billion.

(snip)

Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recommended closing the base and moving most of its operations 20 miles north on Interstate 64 to Fort Eustis. The Hampton group is preparing for the worst, but waiting to take any action until a final decision is made.

On Sept. 8, the nine-member BRAC Commission is expected to announce whether to go along with Rumsfeld's recommendation to close Fort Monroe. After that, President Bush and Congress decide whether to give final approval to the plan, although neither has the authority to strike individual bases from the list.

(snip)

http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-64085sy0aug09,0,6625833.story?coll=dp-news-local-final

Seems like a fair wad of cash just to move a base TWENTY miles north!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. But Haliburton needs the cash

Actually I know nothing about this issue. I would not be shocked to find out that they were involved.

[jmowreader]

2. Closing Fort Monroe makes no sense

First, it's not very big. You're not going to save enough in personnel costs to justify the move. You're looking at a garrison company and a company of military police--MAYBE 500 soldiers, plus maybe 500 civilians. In landmass it's almost insubstantial; a well-conditioned platoon of soldiers could run the perimeter of Fort Eustis in about two hours.

Second, no Army base in the world has enough existing empty buildings to absorb the Army's most important major command, the Training and Doctrine Command. Add to the $1 billion environmental remediation (trust me, that's low) another $1 billion to buy land around Fort Eustis and construct all new state-of-the-art facilities to develop new training methodologies in.

I will tell you exactly why they want to close it, though: the realtor's adage. Fort Monroe lies on the north side of the James River where it drains into the Chesapeake Bay. It has a marina, a (closed) hotel, an airport big enough to fly business jets into, and a long, long stretch of beach. As a developer I could take this land, which the government is going to clean up all nice and pretty for me and sell to me for far below market value because it's surplus government property, subdivide it into 200 plots, and build $5 million homes on it. Which would sell before I drove the first nail. I could pay $200 million for the land, $200 million for building materials, $150 million for really great craftsmen, build 200 truly fine homes and never have to work again in my life. (Or, as the case probably would be, pay Cheney $100 million for the land, spend $25 million on the cheapest building materials I could lay hands on, drop $10 million on illegals to throw the houses up, spend $10 million bribing the building inspector, still charge $5 million per home, then flee the country before the Masonite siding starts to rot.)