What would the Columbus region have looked like without Fort Benning?
What if we woke up one morning and Fort Benning was gone?
What if, just like that, the Army marched away from its 182,000 acres in the Chattahoochee Valley, or worse yet, Fort Benning was never here?
What if the 120,00 soldiers, retirees, civil service employees, contractors and their families were gone?
Some would call it a doomsday scenario.
The economic impact would be devastating. Fort Benning, through its payroll to active-duty soldiers and civil service employees, dumps $105 million a month into the region, according to the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce. That’s $1.26 billion a year in direct economic impact.
“Face it, Benning is a big economic development driver,” said retired Lt. Gen. Carmen Cavezza, a former Fort Benning commanding general. “I suspect it would still be a progressive town because of the kind of people who ran the town and city. But I am not as sure it would have progressed as rapidly.”
Money makes things grow, and Fort Benning has been a constant and reliable source of jobs and money for 100 years now. The Chamber estimates that the annual economic impact on the region is $4.8 billion.
Gary Jones, a retired Army officer who is the chamber’s liaison to Fort Benning, knows the numbers as well as anyone in Columbus. Ask him what happens if Benning is gone and his answer comes in economic terms.
“If Fort Benning ceased to exist today or was eliminated by BRAC, a very, very, very conservative negative financial estimate impact would be imagine a Columbus region today without Aflac, TSYS and CSU,” he said.
The impact would be staggering, but the impact could also stretch into quality of life, Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson said.
“We would not have the broad national and international recognition provided by the fact that tens of thousands of young men and women come to our community’s doorstep each year to train at Fort Benning and then head out into the world to tell the story of Columbus, Georgia,” she said. “We would not have such a tremendous leadership pool with the likes of Bob Poydasheff, Carmen Cavezza and so many others who choose to stay in Columbus and make it their home. We just wouldn’t be the broad, diverse, progressive community that we are if we did not have Fort Benning.”
Bob Koon, a Columbus textile executive for more than six decades, said look at Benning in the terms of jobs. The post has about 11,000 active-duty soldiers on post, on average 17,000 troops per week on post for training and another 10,900 civilian workers. It is estimated that 36,000 off-post jobs are created in the Columbus economy because of Fort Benning, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
“You have to look at it in the terms of jobs,” Koon said. “But then you have to look at the top Army leaders who made this their home. The Carmen Cavezzas and Sam Wetzels and lots of other high-ranking officers.”
But what would have happened if that was gone?
“This would be a totally different community,” Koon said. “We might be Macon. We have had the growth we have had without the infrastructure Macon has — two interstates going in different directions that intersect there.”
Perhaps, the most interesting thought on what the Columbus region would be without Fort Benning comes from David White, the vice chancellor of Troy University’s Phenix City campus. White is a retired Army colonel brought to this area by Fort Benning.
“Without Fort Benning, the biggest impact would be in Russell County,” White said. “Most of the soldiers who live in Alabama, live in Russell County. You would not have that economic impact over here.”
White also believes that no Fort Benning in this region would have rewritten the history books in another way.
“There is a pretty good chance that Phenix City would have never become sin city,” White said. “The gambling and the vice would have never grown to the level it did without the monthly paychecks from the Army.”
This story was originally published October 27, 2018 at 12:00 AM.