Posts Tagged ‘BRAC’

For the second year in a row the Pentagon will ask Congress for a new round of base closures, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters Wednesday during a preview of the department’s fiscal 2014 budget request. The announcement came as no surprise after Congress roundly rejected the administration’s proposal last year to hold BRAC rounds in 2013 and 2015. “We will have to because … you can’t have a huge infrastructure supporting a reduced force …

The Defense Department recently completed a multi-million dollar headquarters for the Army Reserve at Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos in Southern California, but at least one local official wants the city to have a backup plan in case the installation is closed. “I would like to see the formation of a base closure committee,” Los Alamitos Councilman Richard Murphy said last week. “It’s amazing to me that we don’t have one.” Even if there is only a small chance that the base is shuttered, said Murphy, prudent planning should prompt the city to be ready. “If you follow the budget cuts in the military, I think there’s going to be more and more serious budget cuts under this administration,” he said. “We need to go through the exercise of preparing for that.”

Negotiations between the Army and the Fort Monroe Authority have lasted much longer than expected due to a dispute over the value of the portions of the property not slated to revert to the commonwealth of Virginia. The Army is asking for a figure that is 10 times the value estimated by the authority, LRA Executive Director Glenn Oder told the Daily Press …

To avoid “hollowing out” the force as it slashes spending over the next decade, the Defense Department will need to identify components of the budget other than force structure, readiness and modernization to capture the needed savings, Michèle Flournoy, who served as defense undersecretary for policy under Obama until last February, wrote in a commentary Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal. Where else to look? One place is infrastructure. “This inability to shed or realign facilities hangs like an albatross around the department’s neck …

Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy last week cited the 911th Airlift Wing’s low operating costs as a key reason why the Pittsburgh-based unit should retain its flying mission. Murphy’s statement came as the chairman of an Air Force working group reviewing active duty, Reserve and Guard airlift bases was scheduled to visit Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station …

Legislation sponsored by Maine’s two senators would make it easier for tenants located at bases closed in the last BRAC round to qualify for the HUBZone program, a Small Business Administration initiative offering preferential access to federal procurements to businesses in distressed areas. Currently, BRAC installations are designated as HUBZones for five years after they are formally closed. The law, however, defines the geographic boundaries of those HUBZones as the borders of the closed installation, making it extremely difficult for companies to meet one of the program’s criteria — 35 percent of their employees must live within the HUBZone …

The District of Columbia last week issued a request for qualifications from prospective firms to be the master developer for 66.6 acres at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Upper Northwest Washington. The city’s reuse plan for the site, which will feature a town center, calls for 1,864 multi-family housing units, 90 townhomes, 767,000 square feet of office space, 212,000 square feet of retail, and 176,000 square feet of other uses such as arts and entertainment …

The Navy’s selection of an alternate landing site for turboprop aircraft based in Norfolk, Va., will save the government millions of dollars and, more importantly, reduce the risk that Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach is closed in a future BRAC round, according to the region’s congressional delegation. The Navy had spent several years looking for an alternate practice facility to relieve congestion at Fentress Naval Auxiliary Landing Field, which primarily is used by squadrons of F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets from nearby Oceana …

The city of Philadelphia on Friday unveiled a new master plan for the former Philadelphia Navy Yard, a move necessitated by the remarkable investment and job growth the base has experienced since most naval activities shut down following the 1995 round of BRAC. Since 2000, when the city acquired 1,000 acres from the Navy, more than $130 million in publicly funded infrastructure improvements has leveraged more than $700 million in private investment …

The Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority gained its first commercial tenant this week after a data management software firm agreed to construct its headquarters on a 55-acre parcel at the former post located in coastal New Jersey. In the next several weeks, CommVault Systems plans to begin initial site work on the first phase of its headquarters, which includes a $70 million, 275,000-square-foot building, reported NJBIZ. The headquarters will require three construction phases over 20 years …