City shares its strategy for keeping BRAC jobs

Iowa, Illinois civic leaders advised to work together

A delegation from communities surrounding the Army's Rock Island (Ill.) Arsenal is visiting Huntsville this week to learn how Tennessee Valley leaders have made Redstone Arsenal "BRAC-proof."

Rock Island lost about 1,100 jobs in decisions made by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

Officials with the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce and the Tennessee Valley BRAC Committee planned to brief their counterparts from the Quad Cities, Iowa area (Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline and East Moline, Ill.) on how to make sure their area is military-friendly and BRAC-ready. Briefings and tours of Redstone Arsenal and Cummings Research Park were held Thursday, with more briefings and tours planned today.

The Rock Island Arsenal gained about 750 soldiers from the 1st Army in the latest BRAC, but lost thousands more federal and contractor jobs when BRAC took away a big chunk of the Tank and Automotive Command and the Defense Accounting System, said John Thodos, mayor of East Moline.

So the idea of the visit to Huntsville, where Redstone gained three major commands and 4,700 jobs in the 2005 BRAC, is to learn both how to welcome the new people and position Rock Island to be a net gainer the next time, Thodos said.

Military friendly

They'll talk to builders about having housing ready for new employees, job recruiters about luring transferees and holding job fairs for their spouses, and to city and Army leaders about what makes Huntsville and North Alabama such a military friendly region.

"We want to be proactive and not reactive to the next BRAC that comes along," said Donald Welvaert, mayor of Moline.

Loren Traylor, vice president of investor relations at the Huntsville/Madison County chamber, said this is the third time Tennessee Valley officials have been asked to share BRAC strategies with other military communities.

A delegation from communities surrounding Fort Benning, Ga., visited here this summer, and local officials visited areas surrounding Fort Bragg, N.C., in March to discuss the Huntsville area's BRAC success.

Traylor said local leaders will be sharing ideas for making the best case for bringing new jobs to a military base, and for making sure that the employees transferred are happy about moving.

'Change minds'

"They've been told by the Department of Defense that our efforts to communicate with the (military) commands and their employees have been successful and have begun to change hearts and minds," Traylor said.

One of the main success stories the Tennessee Valley can share is how to stick together as a region when fighting for BRAC jobs, Traylor said.

That's a lesson Tennessee Valley leaders learned in 1990, when a BRAC decision to transfer jobs from Rock Island to Redstone was reversed.

Infighting

Leaders then partially blamed infighting among local communities for letting those jobs slip away.

During the past two BRACs, more than 30 communities involved in the Tennessee Valley BRAC community have stuck together, accentuating the region's positives rather than bad-mouthing their neighbors to gain an edge.

"That was a lesson we learned from Rock Island," Traylor said.