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General: Big changes in store for Knox

FORT KNOX, Ky. — Fort Knox will see big changes in 2009 as part of the government’s ongoing military base realignment, the post’s commanding general says.

The transformation, which will bring thousands of Army-employed civilians and full-time soldiers beginning next year, is sure to give a boost to the regional economy, Maj. Gen. Don Campbell said.

About 3,400 members of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division will be arriving at Fort Knox next year from Germany. Those full-time soldiers will make their home at the post.

“I won’t call it a boom, but there will be some opportunity for businesses,” Campbell said last week in a meeting with reporters to give an update on base realignment at Fort Knox.

“The (basic training) soldiers that are here now, they don’t go out and shop,” he said. “The folks that come in will.”

The realignment plan for Fort Knox announced in 2005 will move the Army post’s vaunted Armor Center to Fort Benning, Ga. beginning in 2010. But about 3,100 civilian employees will be transferred to north central Kentucky when the Army’s Human Resources Command relocates to Fort Knox, along with a 3,400-member infantry division from Germany.

“It has a huge potential, as far as economic impact goes,” said Brad Richardson, executive director of One Knox, a federally funded group formed to help ease the transition in the region around the post.

Richardson said by the end of 2011, there will be 20,000 workers — military and civilian — drawing a full-time paycheck at Fort Knox.

It would be the third-largest employment base in the state after Wal-Mart and UPS, he said.

Campbell, who took over as commanding general last January, said the human resources command will arrive between 2010 and 2011. He said construction on the massive new facility that will house human resources is about a third of the way complete.

Campbell has also ordered security procedures for visitors to Fort Knox to be tightened beginning on Jan. 15. Visitors will have to acquire a pass before coming on the post, like at other Army posts around the country, Campbell said.