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Navy Plans $800M Site For SEALs in Coronado

The U.S. Navy is eyeing the southern portion of Coronado’s Silver Strand for a 1.5 million-square-foot construction project that will take 10 years to finish, and will mean up to $800 million in business for Navy contractors.

The buildings at the Silver Strand Training Complex South, just north of Imperial Beach, would be used to train the Navy’s special operations forces, the SEALs. The Navy says its current training facilities are too small, too scattered and obsolete.

Work on 162 acres of the site could begin as soon as 2016.

The dominant features of the site right now are the marshes of South Bay and a decommissioned radio structure called the Wullenweber Antenna Array, dubbed the Elephant Cage by some locals. The Navy has the green light to demolish the antenna array — poles arranged in circles more than 1,000 feet in diameter — though it will preserve a section of the antenna for posterity.

Most of the new buildings will not exceed 45 feet in height. The exception would be a 120-foot-tall parachute drying tower with a 50-by-80 footprint.

Aiming for LEED Silver

Buildings will meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Silver ranking criteria, said a Navy spokesman.

The 27 proposed projects include buildings for individual SEAL units, training facilities and administrative offices. Also planned are a gas station and a mini-mart for Navy customers, and a new entrance to the Silver Strand Training Complex.

The Navy plans to publish its final environmental impact statement in March and make a final decision in the first half of 2015. It was not immediately clear when private industry could get involved with the project, though a Navy spokesman confirmed that the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest in San Diego will coordinate demolition and construction work.

The construction is meant to serve the needs of the U.S. Special Operations Command. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the command has doubled its manpower and nearly tripled its budget. Overseas deployments have quadrupled, according to an environmental document prepared by the Navy.

The California Coastal Commission gave the plan its blessing on Nov. 12, despite the state commission staff’s recommendation to reject the project.

The commission staff had several criticisms. While noting that Navy planners avoided many sensitive habitats on the site, staff members said an endangered herb called Nuttall’s lotus grows in the previously developed areas of the site.

‘Critical Mission Requirements’

Rear Adm. Patrick Lorge, San Diego’s “Navy mayor,” argued in a letter to the commission’s chairman, Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey, that there must be a “proper balance” between environmental protection and meeting critical mission requirements. Nuttall’s lotus is resilient and “too numerous and prevalent to census,” Lorge said in the letter, distributed with Coastal Commission materials on the project.

The Navy agreed to replace the plant at a 3:1 ratio to meet commission requirements.

Also part of the Coastal Commission packet was a letter from the Sierra Club saying the project should not be built. The letter said the project was “not an appropriate use of what is essentially a low-elevation dune field” and said there was no “analysis of less environmentally damaging alternatives.”

Navy planners worked to avoid shore bird habitats and 26 vernal pools that are home to the endangered San Diego fairy shrimp.

The commission also expressed concerns that sea level rise will affect the property, and that development would encourage too many car trips from solo drivers.

Road Work

The Navy document said the construction will mean authorities will have to improve eight intersections by 2040.

One of the questions the Navy has yet to answer is whether to demolish a World War II-era bunker called Building 99, which is part of the old Fort Emory coastal battery and eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The bunker covers 4.6 acres, has a 17-foot thick armored roof and almost 50,000 cubic yards of reinforced concrete and steel — and is in a prime area for development.

The Navy estimates that the process of demolishing Building 99 would take 24 months. Under a worst-case scenario, with no material reused on site, the process of carting off demolition debris will generate 5,400 round-trip truck trips on Palm Avenue in Imperial Beach.

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