The military much prefers turning over old bases to the Park Service than local developers. It means no long meetings looking at development maps while the former base manager is saying things like, “You don’t want to dig here… or here… or—actually, if you can have people avoid walking or breathing through this section, that might be a good idea.”

My dad was on a local citizen’s commission that made suggestions when Fort Sheridan, IL was turned over to the town. It was just a regular base, with barracks and offices and such, so no worries, right? Okay, well, this area had been used by the Navy for target practice during WWI and might still have unexploded shells, and this area was some sort of chemical dump, but nobody knew what chemicals, and this area had been for coal storage. “I thought coal was ‘natural,’” said Dad; “So is arsenic,” hissed a co-commissioner, “and that’s what’s in coal.”