WASHINGTON, DC-In President Obama's budget for fiscal year 2014 there is a $2.4 billion line item calling for a new round of BRAC (Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission). Namely, it includes requests for two rounds of Base Realignment and Closures, the first in 2015 and the second in 2017.
Little attention has been paid to this request, thus far, given the hoopla surrounding the Administration's other proposals. But rest assured, attention will turn to BRAC sooner or later, predicts Jones Lang LaSalle's Barry Scribner—if only because the Department of Defense and Pentagon are seriously eyeing another BRAC for cost reductions.
"Congress is reluctant to consider or approve any BRAC in the short term because it will probably mean a loss of jobs," he tells GlobeSt.com. "Closing an installation is a traumatic event for a community. But it is an important cost-cutting tool for the Department of Defense and Pentagon and they are looking at it carefully." Scribner predicts the next BRAC will be a "classic BRAC focused on cost reduction" and not like the 2005 BRAC that was focused more on transformation.
What Schribner hopes is that the military will look at installation cuts with an eye to redevelopment into commercial use. "Although the military has the ability in BRAC to get market value for an installation I would hope they take a look at reuse possibilities as well, which would definitely help the communities." It wouldn't be the primary motivation by DoD, which must consider the impact on military preparedness first, he acknowledged – "but if reuse is factored in at some point it could make a closure less traumatic."
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