As early as the summer of 2001, Fort Meade was bracing for changes.
For years, the Odenton Army base had been an open campus, its brick gates open to joggers and residents for an evening stroll. But in August, Fort Meade closed its gates, requiring everyone who entered to present military identification or ride with a military escort.
After the attacks Sept. 11, that security intensified at the base, a fixture of west Anne Arundel County since 1917.
Restricted access
Bowlers, golfers, worshipers and shoppers who had frequented base facilities for years had trouble getting on. Military police searched cars, creating lines at checkpoints that backed up Route 175 for miles and took hours to pass through.
Once they did get on base, drivers had to navigate a maze of concrete barriers because of closed roads. Sometimes, the gate that a driver entered was closed by the time he or she left.
Thanks to the provost marshal, the situation is better now. The lines are much shorter, the barriers less frequent, and signs tell visitors which gates are open and when.
But visitors still need a valid military ID or an escort, and as a result, the base that once prided itself on an open-door policy struggles with a security climate that forces it to be less open.
"People are still invited to come to the installation," said Cynthia Lyles-Quinn, garrison public affairs officer. "But when you come now, you are really coming with a more specific purpose."
Fort Meade may be in the middle of a fast-growing section of the county now, but it wasn't that way when it was established. Named Camp Meade, after Civil War Gen. George G. Meade, the base was nestled in a rural area. During World War I and World War II, thousands of troops passed through the base for training. The sprawling campus included an airfield, a munitions training ground and shooting ranges.
Troops continued to move through the base during the conflicts in Vietnam and Korea. In the mid-1950s, the base became home to the National Security Agency, and Fort Meade began its transformation into a military intelligence complex.
Other tenants
Now, visitors to the base are more likely to see suits and ties than fatigues.
About 25,000 civilians work at Fort Meade, compared with 10,000 military personnel. Besides the NSA, other tenants include the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office and the Defense Information School, where journalists and public affairs officers from all services learn their jobs.
Since 1998, when the EPA placed Fort Meade on its Superfund list of the nation's most toxic sites, the Army has been working to clean up after decades of pollution. Recently, the base was recognized for those efforts when it won the Secretary of the Army's Fiscal 2000 Environmental Award.
A big selling point for Fort Meade's tenants is its location between Baltimore and Washington, accessible from both Interstate 95 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
In 1988, the first Base Realignment and Closure Act forced Fort Meade to give up more than half of its land. The Army transferred the bulk of that -- 7,600 acres -- to the Department of the Interior to create the Patuxent Research Refuge. About 400 acres went to Anne Arundel County, which turned it into Tipton Airport.
In October, Congress passed a law giving 100 acres to its real estate arm, the Architect of the Capitol, for a Library of Congress storage facility. The library is one of 13 buildings that the agency will build as part of a 50-year project to manage its overflow of about 20 million books. Each storage building will hold about 2 million books. The first storage module opened last year, and construction is continuing.
The largest construction project on the base is a plan to overhaul about 3,000 military housing units and replace them with new quarters for families.
About 6,000 military family members live on post -- many of them in houses considered substandard. Problems documented include asbestos, lead paint and old plumbing and electrical wiring. Many houses lack master bedrooms, carpeting or enough bathrooms for the modern military family.
Fort Meade is one of the first sites to overhaul its housing under a public-private partnership Congress authorized in 1996, reasoning that the private sector could fix the military's housing problems quicker than the government could. At Fort Meade, Picerne Real Estate Group of Rhode Island won the $3 billion contract to build and manage the houses during the 50-year project.
"The new homes will give the families more room to live in, more room to be a family," said Picerne program manager Bill Mulvey. "A house is not just bedrooms. There's got to be living space."
Building homes
Picerne is creating five distinct neighborhoods of about 600 homes each, with neighborhood centers anchoring all five. A jogging path will connect the neighborhoods. The first house will be completed in the next few months. When construction is finished in 10 years, Mulvey said, the base will look like some of the suburban neighborhoods now surrounding it.
"You'll know you're on a military installation because the post infrastructure will still be there. But in the housing areas, what you'll see is what is in the better neighborhoods: market-quality homes," Mulvey said. "We feel that our soldiers, sailors, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard deserve that."
