Army plans major housing upgrade
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Army this month is launching its largest housing renovation project ever, worth at least $100 million a year and involving 7,700 homes on O'ahu.
"It's the biggest and the richest," said Patrick Batt, who is in charge of the Army's housing renovation program for Hawai'i. "It's the biggest we've ever done. It's the biggest the Army will ever do."
A consortium of builders, developers and property managers who will be picked to renovate the Army's entire housing inventory on O'ahu will oversee a cash flow worth at least $100 million a year and will be committed to maintaining the homes for the next 50 years.
The project is part of the Defense Department's efforts to upgrade all of its inadequate homes by 2007, a shift in military thinking to improve outdated and dilapidated housing worldwide to retain soldiers, sailors and airmen.
While military construction projects have been going on for years on O'ahu and the new plan isn't expected to result in an explosion of construction money into the state's economy, it accelerates the process and brings a steady flow of repair work and maintenance for local contractors.
Army officials said yesterday at a briefing to launch the initiative that they already have met with state and city officials, the Outdoor Circle, Building Industry Association and others, and have surveyed Army families in Hawai'i about what kinds of homes they would like to have.
The Army expects about 100 building industry officials nationwide to attend a forum at the Hilton Hawaiian Village later this month that will describe the general scope of the project, with details left up to the developer.
By mid-October, the Army expects to have potential bidders outline their qualifications. By May of next year, Army officials hope to pick the developer and have construction begin in May 2004.
"I am ashamed of what we ask our soldiers to live in," said Lt. Col. Floyd Quintana, director of public works for the Army Garrison, Hawai'i. Seventy percent of the Army's 7,700 Hawai'i homes are "junk," Batt said. "It's double junk."
Since 1996, the Pentagon has been diverting officer and enlisted housing allowances into developers' hands so they can get projects launched sooner. Under the old system — in which developers built homes, were paid and left — the Defense Department estimates it would take 40 years and $30 billion to $40 billion to upgrade all military housing.
Still, some developers are wary of the 50-year commitment required under the new system, because they have no guarantees that bases will remain open or enlistments will stay the same. The developers lease the land and only get paid if soldiers and their families live in the renovated homes.
Similar projects are being planned by the Navy and Air Force for Hawai'i, but the Army's dwarfs them all.
The Army plan calls for renovations at Schofield Barracks, Wheeler Army Airfield, Helemano Military Reservation, Tripler Army Medical Center, Aliamanu Military Reservation and Fort Shafter — all to be handled by a single group.
Army officials considered splitting the sites among different groups but ultimately decided that a single developer would find savings and better ways of creating a "community" feeling among the various developments, Batt said.
The Army has not yet decided on the minimum qualifications needed to apply for the project. But its size tends to favor large, Mainland companies that have worked on similar military projects nationwide.
Craig Watase, president of the local Building Industry Association, said he supports the project overall, and believes it is good for soldiers and the local construction industry.
But he said yesterday he still has concerns after hearing a briefing on the project before the Building Industry Association.
"It's the big boys from the Mainland that are going to come in and the local guys are going to have to figure out how to partner with those guys," Watase said. "For local companies, it would have been nice to have it broken up a bit.
"There would have been more pieces of the pie to hand out to the local subcontractors. In this scenario, you're going to see one vendor performing without some benchmark to measure them against."
Reach Dan Nakaso at 525-8085 or dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.
