(The former Naval Station at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. Eco Touring on the peninsula to the upper left. Photo Wikipedia.)
Wah-hoo! Talk about your interconnected world- he Bundestag- the German Parliament- approved the expansion of the bailout fund for the PIIGs- Portugal, Italy, Greece and sometimes Ireland. This is supposed to be the most important step in a “tortuous process that has rattled markets and raised long-term doubts about the ability of governments to react to the expanding debt crisis.”
So, the hell with it. Europe is going to be fine, right? It is the post season, and I will pay attention when it is time, just like I did in 2008.
It was more exciting to watch the exceptional lightning show, and contemplating Tracy O’Grady’s Portobello mushroom frites which have made their debut on the Bistro menu at Willow. The light flickered over the balcony, the strikes so distant that it was impossible to calibrate the miles by the time of arrival of the thunder.
There was a dramatic resolution to the baseball mystery. As a result of the night’s events, the Yankees will host the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay will travel to Texas to play the Rangers in the A.L. division series on Friday. The Red Sox reportedly cleared out their lockers at Fenway and are already in Aruba.
I suppose there is something happening in the Senior Circuit, too, with the Braves completing one of the most historic September collapses in baseball. I will worry about that after the divisional series are over.
I was sitting at the computer contemplating the results of a side-show I have been trying to manage in my spare time, around huge contracts and ailing parents. An entrepreneur out West had a great scheme, and approached me to talk to an official in the Base Reallocation and Closure Office down in Charleston.
I enjoy making cold calls on people I don’t know, which is useful in this economy, and called up the BRAC SE office in Charleston to see what was up with the redevelopment of the old Navy base at Roosevelt Roads.
The last time I was there we had the Forrestal Battle Group working up for deployment to the Med, in a totally different world, and the O Club was roaring. The locals didn’t seem to appreciate us, but that is par for the course in the work-up cycle.
Here is the deal: the entrepreneur wanted to turn a buck on using the old dry-dock at the naval base to dismantle the ancient chips laid up in the mothball fleet on the James River. The scheme would be to tow the ships down there, cut them up, and use the steel for the manufacture of reinforcement bars for construction.
The business case was that the government essentially had provided the facility, and would provide the raw materials, and the enterprise would generate jobs and profits out of a modest investment.
It sounded reasonable enough that I agreed to make some calls, and now it was time to pay the piper and type up the results as the light flickered and the Bosox boarded the plane for the island.
I sighed, starting off the report:
“I have to say I am not optimistic about the chances of getting a significant industrial operation set up in the vicinity of the dry dock at Rosie Roads.
The Commonwealth has locked up one side of the facility for a resort, as you noted, and to the north, the Army National Guard is just settling into its new digs in the adjacent new facility.
In my experience- which includes controversies over three former Navy target complexes- this is going to be a difficult sell without having a Puerto Rican advocate to convince the Commonwealth (and the Army National Guard) that you can pull off integrating an industrial process into the multi-use plan promulgated by the Roosevelt Roads Legal Reuse Authority.
Lennar Mare Island LLC managed to do it with the Sausalito-based SWA Group doing the planning, but an industrial function was always envisioned as part of the plan. In the case of Rosie Roads, I can’t see the industrial component in the master plan- and definitely not in the two parcels that will be for sale later this month.
I know you have been working this for a couple years, so permit me to re-state the obvious, since I am just learning this issue.
SWA’s plan for Mare Island divided the old Navy property into thirteen specific zones, which included zones earmarked for higher education, historical, residential and industrial uses, with the vast majority set aside for wildlife habitat and wetlands.
The plan was to have 1,400 homes and condos, plus seven million square feet of commercial, retail, entertainment, and industrial space. In 2008, (as I am sure you know) California Dry Dock Solutions (CDDS) went to the Vallejo City Council with their plan to use the dry docks on Mare Island to break up the Suisun Bay mothball fleet, just as you would like to recycle the James River Fleet on the East Coast.
The CDDS estimated that with two dry docks in operation, they would generate between 60-120 jobs. That has not changed. When Allied Defense Recycling opened for business last year to break up SS Solon Turman they started with 60.
That contrasts with the hundreds of service jobs that would go along with the resort, which would be in direct proximity to the dry dock at Rosie Roads.
I was originally inclined toward optimism- after all, jobs, jobs, jobs is the mantra today, and your business case for breaking ships there and providing re-bar makes eminent economic sense.
The single largest impediment to that paradigm is nationalism, something which does not pertain to the operation at Mare Island, which is unsentimental and mostly about jobs.
I knew three navy facilities that were flashpoints for protest, and the struggle between local activists and the Service took on lives of their own. Economics had nothing to do with them.
The first of them was the Red Horse Creek target range in the Republic of the Philippines, on the island of Luzon. Use of the range was complicated by the fact that scavengers for the dud bombs (and live ones, on occasion) would foul the range.
Injuries fueled the long-running controversy over repatriation of Clark AFB and the Subic Bay Naval Complex. There were bitter and emotional protests, which ultimately led to the return of the sovereign bases after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. (The RP may well like to have us back, now that China has claimed the entire South China Sea, but that is another matter entirely.)
The second case was at THIRD Fleet in the mid-1980s. The Staff confronted an unending series of protests against live-fire training at the Navy target island of Kahoʻolawe, the smallest of the Hawaiian islands.
The ‘Protect Kaho’olawe Ohana’ protest (PKO) included intrusions onto the island and accidents in coming and going which claimed two civilian lives. In the end, the nascent Hawaiian nationalist movement, supported by activist and later Congressman Neil Abercrombie and Senators Matsunaga and Akaka in 1990, and the island was transferred to the State of Hawaii in 1994.
It was interesting- when I was serving the 104th Congress in 1995-96, I discovered Mr. Abercrombie had suddenly become an enthusiastic support of Navy nuclear submarines- so long as they were based in Pearl Harbor!
There are several valid comparisons between O’ahu and Puerto Rico, less the two senators and a congressman. Going over to the CommSta on the base, the bus has to take a sharp turn near the fence, and that is where Puerto Rican separatists spewed bullets into one carrying sailors to shift change to monitor the Cubans.
Two sailors died, and ten were injured. There are a lot of emotions down there, just as there were when Puerto Rican gunmen shot up the House of Representatives.
I personally had a chance to bomb the island of Vieques with our S-3 Viking squadron, and it was grand fun. The target range on the island became the most emotional issue of them all. As you know, the S-3 was an Anti-submarine Warfare aircraft, and had no automated bombing system. I was surprised to see the pilot take a grease pencil and make cross-hairs on the inside of the windscreen as his aim-point.
Damned if Bill didn’t get a Mark-76 near one of the derelict tanks, too.
As I mentioned, we were training then for a deployment that included the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and with the end of the Cold War, the need for training there was perceived to be redundant.
Particularly redundant after a Navy civilian employee was killed during a training strike on the island. The Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility became the target of fairly widespread civil disobedience, taken from the playbook of the PKO.
Local protesters were joined by fellow travelers including Ruben Berrios, the younger RFK, Al Sharpton, dozens of the usual suspects, a rap group and Commonwealth Assembly. It was an exercise in playing to the legitimate national aspirations of the island.
The Navy Department could not stand up to them, and caved to the protests. The island property was transferred to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Without a live training facility, the Rosie Roads complex was essentially useless and was BRACed.
This was similar to the situation in Hawaii. In addition to the always-prickly relationship between the Feds and the Commonwealth, the tourism aspect is hugely symbolic. The industry provides 7% of the island’s GDP, so whether it is realistic or not, there is an inclination to go with locally owned tourist destinations over the prospect of 60-120 industrial jobs.
I asked the anonymous government official candidly what his thoughts were about being able to utilize the dry dock, contained in Zone 3 (“Eco Tourism,” in the Commonwealth Master Plan) there in a manner similar to what Allied Defense Recycling did at Mare Island.
He said there would be three powerful opponents: the Commonwealth, the Guard, and the Tourism industry. He didn’t have a dog in the fight except to dispose of the property.
“Whether it is going to be a local government screw up or not,” he opined, “that is what is going to go down, and if you do not have an organization that looks Puerto Rican, your pals are shit out of luck.””
So, there it is, I wrote. The dining room flickered from the distant lightning. It is the conclusion of a part of the Spanish-American War. Tourism is what will happen on the former Naval Reservation, not ship-breaking, whether anyone is going to go eco-touring or not. Funny how long these things take to get wrapped up.
I made a note, though. There might be some applications for Guantanamo or the savvy investor, besides using that part of Cuba as a prison.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com