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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
May 14, 2005 One City Wants to See Its Base Close California City Hopes to Use Valuable Real Estate Where Base Sits for Housing Of all the cities to face the chopping block in the Pentagon's military base closings, Concord, Calif., has fought like no other. "We would actually like to see this base closed," said Mayor Laura Hoffmeister. Residents have fired off scores of letters, imploring the Defense Department to close the sprawling Concord Naval Weapons Station. It is the only city in the nation to make such a request, and yesterday, the people of Concord got their wish.
But why would this city want its military base to close, with so many other cities fighting to keep theirs? Hoffmeister says the reason is simple. "We do not have, as a built-out community right now, available areas for housing for our kids and our grandkids to live in and still work in our community," she said. The city lies just east of San Francisco and has been hit hard by astronomical housing prices. The base covers thousands of acres of prime real estate valued at nearly a billion dollars. And much of the base is not even used. The Concord base used to store and ship hundreds of thousands of pounds of ammunition but much of it has been shuttered for years. Just over 100 military and civilian workers are left there.
City planners want to turn the naval station into a neighborhood, complete with shopping centers and parks. "We've programmed for 13,000 homes, 15,000 jobs and 50 percent open space and parks," said Jim Forsberg, director of Planning and Economic Development for the city. California's military bases are a multibillion-dollar industry, second only to tourism. The bases are not forfeited easily, but in the case of Concord, the only defense for keeping the base has come from an unlikely group -- environmentalists. They fear that if the base goes, so will the elk and other wildlife that have settled there. "We simply think that they should focus their development on the existing city rather than sprawling out into the naval weapons station," said environmentalist David Reid of the Greenbelt Alliance. If city officials get their way, they say there will be plenty of room for wildlife and development -- just not the military. This story was originally reported by ABC News' Neal Karlinsky for "World
News Tonight." ### |
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