Fort Ord Assimilation
Our project explored land use within the City of Seaside and adjacent open space lands that were part of the old Fort Ord army base. Descriptions of this project, and final projects are located below.
Fort Ord Reuse Plan
The Fort Ord Army base closed down in 1994. The base was 28,000 acres large, roughly the same size as San Francisco. The Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan was developed to find new uses for the vacated land. 21,000 acres were designated for conservation; while 7,000 acres were designated for development. CSU Monterey Bay, housing, and retail are among the uses for the converted land.
Fort Ord National Monument
Designated as a National Monument in 2012, Fort Ord National Monument's 15,000 acres of land are managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the US Army.
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Seaside East
Seaside East is a strip of land designated for development under the Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan. The City of Seaside will assume control of the land in 2018.
Seaside's Economic Development Program Manager (Kurt Overmeyer), stated that Seaside plans to move its City Hall to Seaside East. In addition, Seaside is interested in developing a light industrial/medical research business park, community fields for soccer, housing, trails and the main entrance for the Fort Ord National Monument, among other things. We interviewed a variety of stakeholders for what the community wanted this property to become.
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Monterey County Green Space
Under the Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan, the land north of Fort Ord National Monument was designated as green space under Monterey County's control. The Monterey County Parks Department is not interested in expanding their services to this land.
Eco-tourism is one of the long term goals that all of the stakeholders we talked to were interested in. From increased public access to Fort Ord to the economic benefits, eco-tourism has great potential. However, when a member of the Marriott family toured Fort Ord, scouting eco-tourism's viability, he stated that the dilapidated buildings and underutilized Fort Ord were key reasons he would not advocate building here yet. Seeing how Monterey County has little interest in it's Fort Ord land holdings, our group thought that this county green space could become a great asset for CSUMB. A CSUMB owned regional park would align with a wide array of science classes in addition to serving the public need for accessible green space. This regional park would be a step in accelerating Fort Ord's assimilation, with a long term benefit of enhanced eco-tourism viability. |