Planners Look to Pax River as Guide Ahead of Military Base Expansions

Where once there were trees and fields there stand office buildings adorned with the names of giant military contractors: Northrup Grumman, Sikorsky, Raytheon and more. The road leading to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station has widened from two lanes to six and become lined for miles with shopping centers and big-box stores.

In a county where tobacco once ruled, the defense industry has become king.

As Washington region planners contemplate the effect that the military base realignment and closure (BRAC) process could have on Fort Belvoir and Fort Meade, the transformation and challenges outside the Southern Maryland base in the past decade have helped guide those laying the groundwork for the transfers that will begin in earnest in 2011.

"The biggest thing we've taken from them is to keep being persistent in letting the federal government know of your needs," said Robert C. Leib, the BRAC coordinator for Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold. "You just keep working with them. You keep knocking on the door."

At first glance, the transfer of workers to Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County and Fort Meade in Anne Arundel seems strikingly different from the relocation to the base in rural St. Mary's County that began in the mid-1990s. Belvoir sits in congested Northern Virginia and Meade lies along the busy Baltimore-Washington corridor, while only farmland has competed for space since the facility known as "Pax River" began operation in 1943.

But the demand for more schools and homes, wider roads, improved shopping and better recreational facilities will be no different.

More than 18,000 workers are being transferred to the Belvoir area, and Fairfax has estimated it needs $1.3 billion in road improvements to accommodate the growth. By 2011, Belvoir will be among the biggest military bases in the country and provide more office space than the Pentagon.

Anne Arundel projects 22,000 workers, most of them in related industries, will arrive over the next several years. The state and county have planned an ambitious program of road improvements, office building construction and housing development near Meade. Officials predict construction of more than 15 million square feet of office and retail space, and the price tag for intersection and other road improvements in the area adjacent to the base will exceed $50 million.

In a sour economy, state and local officials worry that infrastructure needs will outstrip the money available to meet them, but they find comfort that the largely civilian workforce coming to Belvoir and Meade tends to be nearly recession proof.

"Things just aren't going to happen overnight," Leib said, "even though everyone's pushing hard as they can."

The best view of the transformation in St. Mary's comes when looking over the shoulder of county Planning Director Jeffrey Jackman as he flips his computer screen between aerial views of 1998 and 2007 along Route 235, which leads to Pax River's gates.

Wooded land on one frame, a shopping center nine years later. A collection for trailer parks, empty fields and roadside shops in 1998 become a huge parking lot and a "super-size Wal-Mart" by last year. A hodgepodge of buildings and open space across from the base's Gate 1 morphs into an office park, home to a half-dozen big defense contractors. Tobacco fields and pastures give way to the cul-de-sacs of suburban-style housing developments.