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Your Chamber Is Tracking Progress in Fort Ord Blight Removal
At its November 7, 2023 meeting, the Marina City Council approved a Notice of Completion for a large Fort Ord blight removal project within city limits. You may have noticed the disappearance of these unsightly, deteriorated buildings over the past year while driving by on Highway 1.
At the proposed City Park at the Dunes site, construction contractors removed materials contaminated with asbestos and lead and then demolished and removed the remaining debris for 45 barracks. At the Cypress Knolls site, the same was done for 30 duplexes. Cost of actual construction work was $4.2 million. Project management, engineering and testing, construction management, inspection, and hazardous material fees cost an additional $1.6 million. Total overall final cost for the City of Marina was $5,530,328.88.
The City of Marina has plans to continue with further removal of blighted Fort Ord buildings. It plans eventually to remove 230 remaining duplexes at the Cypress Knolls site (estimated cost $11.6 million) and remove 19 additional barracks (estimated cost of $2 million). It plans eventually to rehabilitate the abandoned existing pool building (estimated cost of $20 million) and convert an existing athletic building into a multi-use sports facility (estimated cost of $24 million). In addition, private companies such as Marina Community Partners, LLC (Shea Homes) have also removed blighted Fort Ord structures at their own expense as part of housing and commercial development plans.
Where is the money coming from when the public pays for blight removal at the former Fort Ord? Just before the dissolution of the Fort Ord Reuse Authority (FORA) on June 30, 2020, the FORA board approved the sale of bonds to fund blight removal. This generated $30.7 million in funds borrowed from investors that will be paid back over time, with interest, by revenue generated by development. These funds can be (and have been) spent by the various local governments that have Fort Ord parcels in their jurisdictions. Much of the remaining Fort Ord blight is within the City of Marina, which obtained $8.5 million from the FORA bond sales. It may be able to acquire another $6.5 million through its own future bond sales.
Chamber members often ask why the blighted buildings are still there and why the U.S. Army didn’t remove them. When Fort Ord closed in 1994, it had 4,000 structures identified as inadequate or contaminated by hazardous materials. As anticipated in the 1997 Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan, the U.S. Army in 2000 transferred 45 square miles of former base land to FORA, including more than 3,500 buildings and related infrastructure, with the restriction that FORA and local government jurisdictions took possession of the property with the surplus military buildings "as-is, where-is." About 35% of Fort Ord buildings have been reused. Almost all of the rest have been demolished or are planned for demolition.
Your Chamber of Commerce has been tracking and continues to track blight removal at the former Fort Ord and elsewhere in Monterey County. If you have questions, contact Monica Lal at (831) 648-5350 or at monica@montereychamber.com.
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