$7 billion Army
deal to benefit
Hawaii firmsA California company awarded
the housing contract is expected
to parcel out jobs here
A California company has won a nearly $7 billion Army housing contract that will release "an avalanche of cash" on Oahu over the next five decades, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie announced yesterday.
Actus Lend Lease of Napa, Calif., is expected to subcontract "a substantial portion of the work to Hawaii firms and to finance the project with loans from Hawaii banks," said Abercrombie, D-Urban Honolulu.
The Hawaii Democrat said he expects that Hawaii's community college and trade organizations may have to increase its trade apprenticeship programs to meet what he expects will be a growing demand for laborers.
The 50-year contract calls for building or renovating 7,700 Army housing units here, and Abercrombie estimated that the work "will create thousands of jobs during the first 10-year period" with $1.7 billion slated to be spent. Abercrombie said $350,000 will be spent this year to begin the planning phase of the housing project.
But Beth Harbin, small business advocate with the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, questioned whether local companies here "can get up to speed to get into any position to bid for these new jobs."
"We are going to be overwhelmed," predicted Harbin, who says she has been working over the past few months "to raise the bar of awareness" on the effect of the military contract.
She added, however, that over the past year she has been working with Actus. "They appear willing to work with us," Harbin said.
Army officials here acknowledged last year that homes for married solders are "substandard" when they announced the housing program, which calls on private developers to take an active role in building and managing housing for the military.
"The residential communities initiative will provide a vast improvement in the quality of housing for our soldiers and their families," said Col. David Anderson, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii.
"It also represents a tremendous opportunity for local businesses."
Last August, Lt. Col. Floyd Quintana, director of the Army's public works operations here, told reporters that he is "ashamed of what I ask our soldiers to live in."
Other branches of the military are also starting housing privatization. Last year, the Air Force said it began the process designed to privatize half of the family housing units at Hickam Air Force Base.
Its current plans call for retaining 1,284 housing units while privatizing 1,356. The Navy and Marine Corps hope to privatize a majority of their more than 6,600 units sometime later this year.
Under the contract, the Army wants to convert all of its 7,700 housing units on Oahu to be run by private operators.
The Army's program began at Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Campbell in Kentucky under the financing arrangements established by Actus.
The Army says the housing project will include Schofield Barracks, the home of 21,000 soldiers and their dependents; Wheeler Army Airfield; Fort Shafter; Tripler Army Medical Center; Aliamanu Military Reservation, which now houses 100 units for Marine Corps personnel; Helemano Military Reservation; and housing property in Red Hill that the Army recently received from the Coast Guard.
Hawaii will be the 17th housing project undertaken by the Army in partnership with private enterprise.
The program is designed to take into account the opinions of those who will have to live in the units.
At Fort Hood, soldiers said there were too many two-bedroom units and not enough four-bedroom homes. At Fort Meade in Maryland, military families wanted neighborhood centers built around a swimming pool, and young soldiers at Fort Lewis, Wash., liked the idea of being in second-floor apartments built around a town center.
When soldiers in Hawaii were surveyed last year on family housing, they listed security and privacy as their primary concerns, the Army said.
"Soldiers wanted to know that their families would be well taken care of when they were deployed in places like Bosnia," Patrick Batt, program manager for the Army's housing rehabilitation program in Hawaii, said last year.
