Economic prosperity comes from many sources that are internal and external. Depending on what that specific source is, it may very well be the key to rapid growth and support of a specific region, country, city or town. In our case, one source happens to be the United States Army’s Fort Drum and its effects on the North Country of New York. The key issues to identify during this research of Fort Drum, are the effects Fort Drum has on its neighboring residents, in the city of Watertown; and how those effects ripple past the city’s boundaries to. Obviously, as you look at the massive size of Fort Drum, today, you will most likely decipher that there must be some kind of economical effect within the area which it inhabits. But consider this: how would the North Country be affected if Fort Drum was never established within its boundaries?
Before we begin, what exactly is Fort Drum? As you know by now, Fort Drum is the home of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division. According to Fort Drum’s website, this division was first established on November 6, 1944 and was designated the 10th Mountain Division, containing regiments 85, 86, and 87. The 10th Mountain Division would soon enter World War 2 on January 28, 1945, in the North Apennine Mountains of Italy. The 10th Mountain division is noted for its strategy in winter conditions while scaling mountains with or without skis. After the victory in Japan (V-J Day), the division was disbanded on November 30, 1945. However, the division would be reinstated later on January of 1954, for overseas purposes, just to be inactivated again on June 14, 1958. Finally, the unit was reactivated on February 13, 1985 at Fort Drum, New York, as the 10th Mountain Division, and has been there ever since. And throughout the twentieth century leading into the twenty first century, the Mountain Division would play many key roles in military conflicts. Some of these overseas conflicts/ operations included Operation Desert Storm, Somalia, Uphold Democracy (Haiti), and Joint Guard (Bosnia). As you can see, Fort Drum has a very historical background (History of the 10th Mountain Division).
Now that you know the identity of Fort Drum, we can move onto its effects within the North Country of New York. The effects to observe are the economical effects of Fort Drum upon its neighboring towns and cities. First of all, from the basics, when you put a military installation within an area, obviously you will have soldiers. Just like civilians, soldiers have general needs and wants. Some of these needs are as basic as food, water, and toiletries. Also,some of their wants are as general as seeing a movie or going out to eat. But what an installation, such as Fort Drum, does to an area not so heavily populated with franchises and people is to put the economy of that area into rapid expansion. Obviously, when you put hundreds and hundreds of troops within a particular area, chains like Wal Mart will notice their presence and come to that area to establish a profitable store franchise. From this, you then need employees and that’s when these businesses draw in people from other parts of town to work. Thus, the overall conclusion is that the economy will grow because business and population will be growing. And it is not just civilians from different towns that appear to come to town: there are also those troops with families who add to the economic growth.
Indeed it is a fact that Fort Drum provides many towns with an economic boost. However, there is one specific place that should be discussed before any other parts of the North Country are brought up for discussion. This area happens to be the city of Watertown. This is the area directly affected by Fort Drum’s economic effects due to its location right next to Fort Drum. But what specifically has Fort Drum brought to Watertown to increase the city’s wealth? Well, in general, people. In the New York Times, Eric Schmitt wrote an article called “The Talk of Fort Drum: Boom Times for Army Base and It’s Region”. Mr. Schmitt states:
The signs of growth are everywhere. Housing developments have gobbled up hundreds of acres of farmland. Fast-food restaurants have sprouted practically overnight along Arsenal Street, a main thoroughfare in Watertown, the region's largest community, with nearly 30,000 people. (Schmitt)
What Mr. Schmitt is saying is that Fort Drum has brought job opportunities and a reason for business chains to set up shop in the area. Another media report is, “Fort Drum and the North Country: a Partnership” by Sarah M. Rivetie. This article expresses a very convincing money figure relating to how Fort Drum truly impacts the North Country, and most definitely, Watertown. According to Mrs. Rivetie’s article, Fort Drum was responsible for pumping 1.68 billion dollars into the North Country’s economy (Rivetie). And you can’t deny that that money supported the prosperity of the North Country. Specifically, in Watertown’s case, there is much economic growth occurring even at this very moment. Also, as you might imagine, from all the growth occurring in Watertown there is a very strong possibility that some of this wealth has rippled past the city and into other towns and villages.
The next point to discuss is how the success of Watertown from Fort Drum spreads, or ripples, to other towns and villages. Even before Fort Drum’s expansion, citizens in neighboring towns of southern St. Lawrence county foresaw what was bound to happen when the military installation grew in size. The studies that were performed were within the towns of Edwards, Fowler, Hammond, Macomb, and Pitcarin (Harris). Surveys were taken which included what citizens in these towns figured would happen because of the Fort Drum expansion. The majority of participating residents believed that the traffic and roadways would be the most affected (Harris). Next, would be the rise of students within public schools, along with an increased construction of homes (Harris). Then there was the last most voted upon, which stated that there was going to be more commercial activity and more jobs in the area (Harris). But these are not surprising facts. It is almost common sense that if a base, such as Drum, expands, there will be growth in every aspect of a community, even crime. During an interview with the Village of Potsdam Mayor, Reinhold Tischler, he referred to crime, saying that there would be some form of increase in this field from the Fort Drum expansion. Furthermore, Mr. Tischler isn’t the only one with views such as this one. Back to the study by Harris, it was recorded that 63% of all the surveyed town’s citizens stated that there would be a definite or probable increase in crime. This just shows that when the Fort Drum expansion was bound to happen, there was certainly going to be change in many town communities. Whether it was good or bad, things we’re going to change and ripple into other residential communities.
What does it mean to ripple economic effects past the main prospering city, this city being Watertown? It is very simple: when wealth ripples, it spreads to other places, almost like a contagious disease. What this means is that prosperity from one area will jump from the main source to the next neighboring area and so on. This can be done in multiple ways. For example, not all soldiers stationed at Fort Drum wish to live on base or in the city of Watertown. So the next step to take, in their situation, would be to find an area which better suits their wants and needs. So let’s say this community happens to be Gouverneur. What can you gather from this? You might say that since a soldier decided to live there, the housing market went up, and so did the profits of businesses like restaurants and gas stations. It may seem small and insufficient using a single person as an example of a booming economy, but it is not just one person taking these courses of action. So, you can understand how quick and important this rippling effect is to the economy of the North Country. But most importantly, you can see how contagious this process is when studying it, or living it firsthand, and how prosperous other communities can be because of the success of Watertown.
Within the Fiscal Year 2008 statement of Fort Drum’s economic impact, it is clearly shown how the rippling effect plays out within the immediate community surrounding Fort Drum. For example, on page 4, the Fiscal Year 2008 statement clearly points out the base’s community housing expenditures within a data chart. They happen, according to the statement, to add up to a total of $10,335,141.00 (“U.S.”). But why is this important to point out to you? The reason is that all these expenditures just don’t lie in the city of Watertown. What the Fiscal statement ends up doing is breaking down where all the expenditures go and come from, and it ends up being that these expenditures reach around the tri county area. Thus, in Gouverneur the total expenditures are $451,974 (“U.S.”). In LeRay, a town one mile north from the city of Watertown, from its southernmost tip, the total expenditures are $4,259,176 (“U.S.”). From this statement you may gather that Fort Drum’s wealth spreads as their base, and population grows. These are only the homes that Fort Drum invests in: and there is much more investing than you can imagine that takes place right now.
The town/ village of Potsdam is approximately one hour and forty minutes away from the city of Watertown. But does that prevent all the economic effects from the military installation upon the town/ village? Through careful research, I found that Fort Drum does not affect Potsdam in any direct manner. The interview with the Potsdam Mayor Mr. Tischler showed that when it comes to economic growth from Fort Drum in Potsdam, there is “Not really [any economical effect]...”(Tischler). However, in an indirect manner, there seems to be an exception involving Potsdam’s wealth from the 10th Mountain Division.
First of all, you could consider the full time and part time students at Jefferson Community College (JCC), a college supported under SUNY Potsdam. Not all students who attend this community college are civilian residents; some may either be soldiers or the spouses of soldiers. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any direct answer, from the advisors I came into contact with, as to how many soldiers or spouses have been through JCC in the last year or so. But you may very well consider the facts that this educational institution not only rakes in students from all different backgrounds, but boosts Potsdam’s economy.
The concrete explanation as to how Fort Drum affects Potsdam in an indirect manner seems to reside upon the construction contractors and their work within the North Country. These contractors play an important role in Potsdam because they are the ones bringing in an economic boost from the Fort Drum growth. In specific terms, the contractors that might be recognizable within the Potsdam area are Fiacco and Riley Construction Inc. and J.E. Sheehan Contracting Corp.. When these contractors take on contracts within Fort Drum’s installation, they build their business and their reputation. From building their business, they then need to seek for more contracts to fulfill their broader need of profit and their expansion. That’s how contractors are able to survive in quite areas such as Potsdam. Once they’ve received a contract from an installation such as Fort Drum, their profits will expand from the government, making it possible to spread out further in the North Country with new offices, workers, managers, etc… Thus, this leads to contractors like Mr. Sheehan, who once they start producing money, they start to move to other places like Potsdam because of the increase in their size from Fort Drum.
In J.E. Sheehan Contracting Corp.’s case, what you might not have known was that their current projects involve building Potsdam’s new village hydro plant on Raquette River, road/ parking lot work at SUNY Potsdam, and installing a new boiler system in the college at Potsdam (Freilich). So, as a student, or resident within the village of Potsdam, you can see that these companies most definitely affect your lives every day. And it is a definite that these contractors, like Mr. Sheehan, have been affected by Fort Drum. Furthermore, as an anonymous employee of Sheehan Asphalt stated, when asked if he thought other contractors have benefited from working on the base, like Sheehan did, he stated:
Yes, absolutely. Over the last few years, I've worked with a lot of
contractors up here who have partaken of the opportunity to work at Fort
Drum and it has gotten them through some very hard times. I personally
refuse to work down there because of the drive. (Anonymous Employee)
It’s not just Mr. Sheehan influencing the economics of Potsdam. In the case of Fiacco and Riley, I spoke with Mr. Khris Frego, the Grandson of Mr. Thomas Fiacco, the owner of Fiacco and Riley Construction Inc.. And while speaking to Mr. Frego, he
stated that even though his family-owned company was “…pretty conservative”, they have done a substantial number of projects down in Fort Drum. However, according to Mr. Frego, they don’t take gambles . Some of their projects in Fort Drum consisted of railroad work and water piping. But Fort Drum wasn’t their only source of projects. Some of their other projects consist of construction around Potsdam. Specifically, the new Lowe’s was one of their customers. They were also involved with Tractor Supply, across the street from Wal Mart, but that was when they sold some of their land for their (Tractor Supply) building establishment Frego).
In addition, to point out once again, what contractors like Sheehan and Fiacco and Riley do to an area like Potsdam is that they indirectly spread Fort Drum’s economical effect. Meaning, from their contracts down in Fort Drum, they grow to an extent where they may support themselves even more as their profits increase, so that brings these working men and women to start progressing on other projects like Lowe’s and the Raquette River further from the economical source (Being Fort Drum/ Watertown). To give a hard example as to how much of an impact construction contractors play in the economy of the North Country, we can go back to Sarah W. Rivette’s article from “Fort Drum and the North Country: a Partnership”,
where she wrote about how Fort Drum pumped 1.68 billion into the local North Country
economy (Rivette). Well, when broken down, Sarah Rivette records that “…$72.8 million [, from Fort Drum,] was spent on contracts with businesses in the St. Lawrence, Lewis and Jefferson counties” (Rivette). This provides the hard facts to show that construction contractors really do impact the North Country in a direct and indirect way.
From the start of this research paper, it was asked that you consider the effects if Fort Drum were to ever be shut down. By this time, you might have a logical explanation of what might happen. But all in all, your explanation is a rhetorical answer. What I mean by this is that everyone can understand what would happen if Fort Drum was decommissioned from the North Country. And, of course, the answer would be extreme devastation. “If Fort Drum were to close it would be nothing but devastating to the North Country economy” said Fred Hanss, the Director of Potsdam Planning and Development (Hanss). “It would be a real crushing blow” said Reinhold Tischler, the Mayor of Potsdam (Tischler). Also, according to what the Associate Director at the St. Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, Ellen Nesbitt, said, “having seen Plattsburgh, after the Air Force base shut down, there was a huge decrease in population, the schools downsized in population after five years of increasing in size, so the effects of Fort Drum would be devastating”(Nesbitt).
For a more direct answer, as to how Fort Drum would cripple the North Country economics if it were to ever be shut down; you could just look to the north eastern half of New York, when the Plattsburgh Air Force base shut down. According to an article in the New York Times, “New York Sues to Halt Closure of Plattsburgh Air Force Base”, Plattsburgh shows first-hand the issue of a military installation shutting down. For example, within the article it states how Plattsburgh
was ready to face a loss in about 3,000 military and civilian jobs, totaling at “…about 4,500 jobs when operations there are shut down the same year” (“New York”). And when the Griffiss Air Force base did shut down, it was a major blow, as predicted. What Roland Carter, owner of Carter Trucking, was asked in an interview to comment on the Air Force base that existed in Plattsburgh. He said “[It] represented the economy” (Carter). Mr. Carter commented later that his business had 100 million dollars in projects in Plattsburgh before the base was closed down
(Carter). It’s not easy for a township, city, etc to lose such an installation. The Griffiss Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York, is just an example of the devastating blow a base closing will have on the economy of that particular region. With the size of Fort Drum today, you can only imagine the impact.
These effects wouldn’t just hurt the immediate townships that Fort Drum bordered, it would have some spreading effects all the way up in Potsdam. This would be the case because the contractors would be hurt in the process of the military installation closing shop: they would be losing very important business with the strongest employer in the North Country and that would have negative effects in Potsdam because those contractors employ workers and managers and do work in Potsdam. Thus, the reason for this is that the contractors make money by doing construction projects. So if they are doing projects in Fort Drum, they are making a substantial amount of money; so they can expand their equipment and staff, therefore their working office scope further out due to higher profits. That’s what gives
contractors like Sheehan an opportunity to work in areas such as Potsdam, on projects regarding our major economic boosters, SUNY Potsdam and the new hydropower plant.
However, if the contractors lost their Fort Drum contracts, they would have to shrink their offices around the North Country to help accommodate for their lower income. Or, to share an idea that some of businessmen told me, competition might become more brutal because more people will be scavenging the same townships for work (Frego and Carter). Other than that, it is hard to say how the effects of Fort Drum closing would impact Potsdam, but my interviews indicated that there would be a definite, even “…crushing…”, effect felt in the North Country (Tischler). So if it is felt in the North Country, my interviewees state that it will definitely be felt
in Potsdam.
In addition, Fort Drum is a very complex installation full of employment opportunities for both military and civilian workers. What the base has given back to the North Country is far more than rewarding. Between the growth of Watertown, and the rippling effects to towns like Gouverneur, Fort Drum has been like the battery that keeps on going. Even in a town as far as Potsdam, effects might be indirect, but they are still reaching. But, when it does come to our smaller towns, like Potsdam, it is important to understand the role that the construction
contractors play in our community. For the most part, when it comes down to economical impact, without contractors increasing in size from Fort Drum contracts, then expanding outward throughout the North Country, there would be little to no way to explain any type, if any, of impact upon Potsdam by Fort Drum. If the base ever undergoes another expansion, hopefully towns like Potsdam can prosper more like the towns close to Watertown.
Furthermore, Fort Drum is such a crucial tool in the North Country economic system that if this tool were to ever be lost, it would be catastrophic to everyone living in Northern New York. However, Fort Drum shutting down seems very improbable and even impossible at this point in time. Just to see the large amount of people in and out of the Watertown Wal Mart showed me that the economy around Fort Drum isn’t going anywhere (observation) any time soon. And, hopefully, the only effect of Fort Drum to come is more expansion and growth for the North Country. In conclusion, Fort Drum is a very distinguished base that should be noticed for its contributions, not only for its economic impact but for its history in U.S. battles, because without the 10th Mountain Division there would definitely be a few downfalls in the U.S.’s
foreign and domestic history.
Works Cited
Carter, Roland. Personal Interview. 11-20-09.
Frego, Khris. Personal Interview. 11-20-09.
Freilich, Craig. “Potsdam builder Jim Sheehan’s enterprises continue to grow.”
North Country Now, 11 Aug. 2009. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.
Glenn, Harris. Local Planning for Fort Drum.
Canton: St. Lawrence University, 1985. Print.
Hanss, Frederick. Personal Interview. 11-10-09.
“History of the 10th Mountain Division.” www.drum.army.mil
Fort Drum, 10 July 2008. Web. 28 Oct. 2009.
Nesbitt, Ellen. Personal Interview. 10-28-09.
“New York Sued to Halt Closure of Plattsburgh Air Force Base.”
New York Times, 7 Dec. 1993. Web. 21 Nov. 2009.
Rivette, Sarah, W.. “Fort Drum pumps $1.68b into local economy.”
Fort Drum and the North Country: a Partnership, ???. Web. 26 Oct. 2009.
Schmitt, Eric. “The Talk of Fort Drum; Boom Times for Army Base and It’s Region.”
New York Times, 30 Nov. 1989. Web. 21 Nov. 2009
Tischler, Reinhold. Personal Interview. 11-05-09.
United States. Fort Dum Economic Impact Statement. Fiscal Year 2008. New York: Plans, Analysis and Integration Office, 2008. Print.
Observation The large (compared to Potsdam) amount of people in and out of the Wal Mart in Watertown.
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