Pentagon Busily Bartering In Massive Building & Refurbishing Effort

The Pentagon is about halfway to its goal of obtaining development agreements to build or refurbish 185,515 housing units by late September 2007.

It’s the largest such project since Congress first tapped the private sector to upgrade military housing in 1996. Private developers are being using to finance and construct the new housing, as officials at the Pentagon believe the private sector can do it faster and more cheaply than the government could.

Interestingly, the Pentagon is contributing no money to the various building and refurbishing projects. Instead they’re trading the use of their land (owned by the U.S. government) in the form of a long-term lease to major developers, who in effect become partners with the military.

For example, the Army has a huge development in Oahu with plans to refurbish and build 8,000 homes for armed services members and their families on the island. The new partnership with Actus Lend Lease, in which the Army has a 49% stake and Actus 51%, is called Army Hawaii Family Housing LLC.

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