When the Army closed the doors at Fort Ord in 1994, Monterey County was presented with an unparalleled opportunity to create a new town out of prime real estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The 28,000-acre base is nearly the size of San Francisco and is located in an area that has attracted tourists for years. Local leaders, such as U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel), envisioned cutting edge urban planning that would provide affordable housing and walkable communities for the workers who staff much of the county’s tourism and agricultural industries, and who cannot afford to live in some of the state’s most expensive towns.

Twelve years later, the big plans for Fort Ord are mostly gone or unrealized. What is slowly taking shape is a typical California beach town revival, with hotels and single-family housing tracts winning out over innovative planning and affordable housing. Some new buildings have sprouted on the base, including part of the campus of 4,000-student California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB). Much of the open space remains, including beaches that will be opened by the state when it finds the money. Two-thirds of the base’s inland territory will be preserved.

“It’s a poster child for success, and a poster child for failure” Farr said of Fort Ord reuse effort. “I think some things have been done very well, and some things done with mediocre vision.”

What remains from the old Fort Ord is a significant number of boarded-up buildings awaiting environmental remediation of asbestos and lead paint before the structures can be torn down. Some of the older buildings have been converted into offices and classrooms, but many more stand empty and decaying. It may be another eight to ten years before Fort Ord looks significantly different than it does today.

The educational changes on the site of the former base are most noticeable in the new library and sciences building at CSUMB. In addition to CSUMB, the University of California, Santa Cruz, was given 1,100 acres. About half of UC’s land is being used for a research center and for an incubator for new businesses; the other half is being kept as open space. Elsewhere at Fort Ord, Monterey Peninsula College plans to build an emergency training facility that should attract public safety officials from across the state, and Golden Gate University and Monterey College of Law have opened campuses.

The most significant changes on the old military base thus far are within the city boundaries of Seaside to the south and Marina to the north. The two former military towns divided 5,200 acres of the base land. Businesses in the cities were hit hard by the closure, and development has tended towards efforts to make the cities some money. Land that the cities received in large part for free from the federal government was sold to housing developers. Sale tax generating activities such as shopping centers are planned for other sites. Marina has already taken over the former airport at the base, while Seaside bought the base’s two golf courses.

The first major housing development, Seaside Heights, a 380-unit complex, is built out. Local governments have given approval to several more, including: Marina Heights, with 1,050 units; the University Village project, with more than 1,000 homes; and Seaside Resort, a 330-room hotel on a golf course with time-share units and single family homes.

The most unusual proposed development is East Garrison, a 244-acre mixed-use development that is proposed to have 1,400 residential units, a town center and an arts district in about two dozen renovated Army buildings. During World War II, the buildings housed German prisoners of war. The project will be built on unincorporated county land and has been approved the county’s Board of Supervisors.

About 20% of the estimated 6,000 units to be built on base land will be affordable. State redevelopment law mandates that 15% of the units be affordable, but supporters of affordable housing had hoped to see as much as 50% of the units earmarked as affordable. Congressman Farr gave up that dream in 2004 when he realized that the Fort Ord Reuse Authority (FORA), made up of local government officials, would not buy into that goal.

Farr had hoped that the base would get rebuilt as a model for the rest of the country. Instead, he said, “They’ve approved a bunch of shopping centers and golf courses — what you’re seeing in urban sprawl in the rest of the state.”

Farr said that FORA simply went along with whatever local city and county governments decided to do.

“The lesson learned here is California needs to really have a vision for the planning of the state,” Farr said, noting the state is one of only a few among industrial states that has no major land use plan, other than coastal zoning. “People need to spend a lot of time on details, particularly here where you had a clean slate with no prior zoning.”

One local official sees it differently.

“What we have opposition to is our cities are being asked to bear the burden of providing affordable housing for the entire county,” said Lou Dell’Angela, community development director for Seaside. “We are a blue collar town. We are not a Carmel…or Carmel Valley.”’

Dell’Angela said projects like a hotel resort and a proposed regional shopping center on base land will help Seaside get the revenue it needs “to provide services to our residents.”

Farr said the most attractive and innovative low-cost housing at the former base is being developed by the military, which is using 44 different architectural styles to create new rental housing. The military, which still uses about 750 acres of Fort Ord, also is building community centers and recreational trails. The housing program is called the Clark Pinnacle Project and was authorized by federal legislation to upgrade military housing nationwide. Under the program, 2,000 housing units will be built for military families in the Monterey area by the year 2013.

Many of the residential projects approved on the base did not come without a fight. In November, a lawsuit filed by a citizens group against the City of Marina and the developer over construction of Marina Heights was settled after the developer, Cypress Marina Heights, agreed to pay $1.75 million to support low-cost housing.

Contacts:
Congressman Sam Farr, (202) 225-2861.
Linda Stiehl, Fort Ord Reuse Authority, (831) 883-3672.
Lou Dell’Angela, City of Seaside (831) 899-6724.