On Monday, I did a day trip to the Navy base at Patuxent River, Maryland for work. It happens that, just as with my recent trip to Annapolis, this is one of the bases my family was stationed at during my dad’s Navy career. Here are some thoughts about going back to childhood places.
First of all, whenever I go to these places nowadays I am always surprised by how small they are. While big things happen at Pax River, it still is a pretty compact piece of land.The activities on the base expanded rapidly during the early '90's (the last time I was there) because of BRAC.
Starting about 10 miles from the base, there is a lot of strip mall, big-box development, and a number of housing developments. So as you go the 50 miles or so from DC down there, you reach the end of the DC suburbs, have about 15 miles of country, and then sprawl leading up to the base. The county was happy for all the jobs, and they proclaim this all a big success...I just think things could be done better and differently.
I went onto the base through "gate 2" which is on the grounds of the former Frank Knox Elementary School - where my sister went to first grade, and I went to third grade. The base exchanged the school for a utility plant with the county - so the school became part of base property and the county now operates the plant, using the spare capacity to serve the community.
This kind of transaction - a real property exchange - is increasingly being used by DoD to turn over utilities to people who can manage them better, reducing footprint expenditures or gaining alternative assets of value that fit the portfolio better. So to get on base, you go into an addition to the school that is where the base pass office is. The rest of the building is a training and admin facility, used at night by U of Maryland, Fla Inst of Technology and other schools for college courses. Then you drive down the main road (I remember it from riding my bike up there and also playing in those woods during the snow) - off to the right, as we were heading into the main part of the base where the hangars are, I could see some of the little red brick townhomes like we lived in.
In another modernization effort, these properties may be going into what's called an enhanced use lease (EUL), where a developer will take a 50-year lease on the ground and rebuild. It's not likely to be housing anymore, as two EULs off-base, out in the community, have been done to build pretty nice military communities.
I don't remember the hospital on base, but like Annapolis, it has been repurposed into an office building. Efforts like this are the norm on military properties, but they often have mixed results - the old buildings don't always convert easily to new uses and the trifecta of mold, asbestos and lead based paint are often encountered during the renovation. These problems, not readily apparent during the beginning project stages, often run the project costs up so that, comparatively, the renovation looks like a poor decision versus new constructions.
One of the buildings I visited looked like a converted barracks, probably from the '40's, very similar to one I was in when I was stationed at Monterey, California in 1980. All the wood framed and sashed windows are simply falling apart, there were window a/c units; basically a call for a total rework.
At Pax River, it is clear that all the money goes into the hangar areas – the testing here is what makes the money on the base, its basic justification. There is a very neat new HQ building at the head of "hangar row.” This is where Navy testing for new aircraft happens, and increasingly, USAF and Boeing bring new systems here. I just had a quick impression of this part, but the HQ building has been done in a modern open plan and arcade still so natural light reaches in to nearly every work space. Compared to the other parts of the base, it is new, of good design and in really good shape.
Also, like most bases these days, there is a stand alone McDonalds there and a Subway. These augment a single dining facility that is only used by single enlisted sailors on meal cards. The old gym, combined with an indoor swimming pool and bowling alley, must have been there when we were there but I don't remember it. It is still in use, and there is a worry that a facility of this type, built new, won't have the capacity to support everything going on there now.
I did not see an RA5C (on my last visit, one of my dad’s planes was on display near the gate) this time, but there were several F/A18s and an alpha jet...also there was a large number of old test aircraft near gate 1 but we didn't go over there, so I couldn't see what was on display.
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