By Christie Duffy
Correspondent
No one’s around except grazing deer and crickets. Weeds are overtaking the sidewalks and roads. This is what large swaths of Fort Monmouth looks like today.
In 2005, the Pentagon decided to shut down the history-making installation as a way to save money.
In 1946, Fort Monmouth Army engineers bounced radar off the moon, taking the world’s first electronic step into space.
The gates were officially locked in 2011. Operations were moved to Maryland. The county’s unemployment rate was projected to double.
County Freeholder Lillian Burry sits on the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority.
“What kind of an impact? A devastating impact. There were 5,000 jobs within the fort itself that were lost,” she said.
Outside the fort, she says 15,000 additional jobs were affected.
Some continue to feel an impact.
“We’re suffering. We’re all suffering a lot of businesses you know. Like we used to have a lunch crowd, 12 o’clock, line out the door. Now it’s all quiet,” said Luigi’s Pizza & Ristorante Manager Rob Patidr.
The abandoned base spreads across 1,100 acres and three towns — Oceanport, Tinton Falls and Eatontown. About three-quarters of the fort remains without a contract for redevelopment. Eatontown’s council president says there has been no ratable development in his town’s portion. There are complaints about buildings sitting vacant and falling into disrepair.
But today, nearly a decade later, some parts of the base are beginning to buzz. Construction is underway in the Tinton Falls section. New buildings are going up and a more manicured landscape is taking shape.
“In the last year and a half we’ve seen tremendous progress made here. You just have to look over my shoulder and see the CommVault building which was one of our very first positive successes,” Burry said.
Data software company CommVault is expected to bring over 2,000 jobs to its 55-acre, multi-building campus. But another local official, Oceanport Councilman Joe Irate, says gains here are Oceanport’s losses. He says the company is only moving over a few miles into Tinton Falls, calling it job relocation not creation.
Across from the CommVault property, the Sun Eagles Golf Course is open, and the county says it will be getting upgrades. The county has also opened a new recreation center and an in-ground pool on the fort.
While Tinton Falls is turning that building next to CommVault into a school, private home sales are planned here. Officials say the marina has been transformed. A health care company is coming in to renovate the old Army clinic into an acute care center. Private housing is planned and Princeton University is planning to put a driverless car testing facility here on base.
All involved in planning for Fort Monmouth’s Future say redevelopment has been slowed by bureaucratic red tape.
Officials say the state and county are pursuing a purchase of the remaining land to speed Fort Monmouth’s redevelopment.