A drive up the state highway bordering the western side of what was once Fort McClellan is an economics lesson. When thousands of GIs called the fort home, McClellan Boulevard businesses catered to soldiers and their families.
With the soldiers gone from the fort nearly six years, the stretch of road in front of McClellan is changing to keep pace. Gone is the over-reliance on khaki-clad customers to keep the cash registers ringing.
Last week, news arrived that a major retailer is eyeing a piece of property at the intersection of Summerall Gate Road and McClellan Boulevard. The Joint Powers Authority, the body charged with turning the 18,000 acres once belonging to the Army into something to benefit public and private interests, will sell the property to Earlon McWhorter, an Anniston businessman who owns a successful retail development company.
All parties are remaining tight-lipped as to the name of the future retailer. If all goes according to plan, we’ll all know by May.
The bigger point is that change is happening. This acreage for retail here, another plot for retail there, and it all adds up. Hundreds already call the former fort home. Thousands more go to work there every day. Cultural life is blossoming with the Music at McClellan series and the Mountain Longleaf Festival. Stringed-instrument manufacturer Howard Core Co. is moving in. But now is not the time to rest at what has happened in a handful of years.
Very soon, the JPA will announce it has selected a firm to study the feasibility of placing a research park at McClellan. These feasibility re-searchers have an ample canvas on which to sketch. Thousands of forested acres in the foothills of the Appalachians are but the first, most obvious, selling point. Top-quality academic institutions within a hundred or so miles of Anniston abound in Alabama and Georgia. What’s needed is a concrete vision and bold leadership among many partners to carry out the plan for a research park.
Smart development at McClellan can improve this region’s future for generations, much in the same way as Fort McClellan did for eight decades in the previous century. Good research institutions from the business world and academia can bring high-paying jobs, which would attract retailers and housing. And before you know it, the region’s overly GI-dependent economy is a memory.
