Military Buildup Booming

Local San Diego construction industry benefiting from profusion of stimulus projects

At a dusty construction site at Camp Pendleton, about 40 masonry workers climb scaffolding and maneuver around rebar to set the concrete-block walls of a $24.6 million Wounded Warrior barracks.

The 200-bed facility, designed to help Marines and sailors wounded in combat recuperate, is one of a slew of new barracks projects on military bases in San Diego County. Moreover, the boom in military construction will grow even larger with the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package.

The military work is providing a much-needed boost for the local construction industry, which is hurting not only from the housing slump but also from a slowdown in construction of offices and shopping malls.

“It ramped up last year and is growing,” said Dave Roach, a senior vice president with Barnhart Inc., the general contractor on the Wounded Warrior barracks. “When you look at what is happening in the general economy and the construction industry, whether it’s the private sector or even schools, this military increase has helped our business a lot.”

It’s difficult to say just how many jobs are linked to the increase in military building in the past couple of years. A study by Export Access, commissioned by the San Diego Military Advisory Council, estimated that the Pentagon spent $15.5 billion in San Diego County in fiscal 2008, but it didn’t break out figures for construction.

San Diego County’s construction industry has shed plenty of jobs over the past few years. It employs 66,700 workers today, down about 28,400 from the peak in 2006.

But several programs by the Pentagon — including a barracks upgrade program and a drive to increase the number of Marines — have helped cushion the blow from the residential and commercial building downturn.

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SOURCE: Union-Tribune