Fort Carson officials unveiled options to house thousands of new troops Wednesday night, including even more growth than had already been announced.
   The post is preparing an environmental impact statement on how it will deal with a planned fifth combat brigade and the possibility of a large helicopter unit.
   Pentagon officials plan to house more than 30,000 soldiers at Fort Carson by 2013, an increase from 17,500 today.
   A draft of the impact statement is not due out until fall.
   The Army plans to build more offices, warehouses and housing units and has to figure out how it will handle issues from utilities to endangered species that could be displaced by the additional troops.
   The Army added a new twist by studying the potential for about 3,000 more soldiers coming to Colorado Springs and a major overhaul of Butts Army Airfield.
   “Right now we are being considered for a potential medium combat aviation brigade, that’s something that just came down recently,” said Rob Ford, who is heading the environmental impact assessment team for Fort Carson.
   The helicopter unit would bring 116 helicopters, crews and maintenance personnel. The Army is apparently studying either adding a new helicopter brigade to its arsenal, or moving one here from another base.
   The extra infantry brigade, announced by the Army in December, would bring 3,900 soldiers, and they would start moving to the post in 2011.
   To house the units, the post is examining three sites, one near Interstate 25 on the northeast side of the post and two that lie south of the post’s main housing areas along Wilderness Road.
   At a meeting on the plan at a Colorado Springs hotel, post officials turned back questioning from opponents of a massive proposed expansion of a southeast Colorado training area that the brass says is completely unrelated.
   “That’s something I won’t be talking about,” said Tom Warren, who is overseeing Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site issues for the post.
   Opponents of the Army’s proposed 418,000-acre expansion of the Piñon Canyon site, near Trinidad, held their own meeting before the Army confab. They say the Army is trying to pull a fast one by bringing in more troops without publically addressing its expansion desires.
   “If they crowd Fort Carson with as many soldiers as they are talking about, they’ll have to grow down there,” said Tony Hass, a rancher and Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition member who lives near the training site. “It’s connected.”
   The opposition group drew more than 70 people to its meeting, while the Army’s meeting drew about 40, including more than a dozen Army employees.
   Questions ranged from traffic to water rights. The Army said it will also examine whether the extra troops should come here at all.
   “The evaluation of potentially not moving these units will be in the document,” Warren said.

Renters had an easier time finding apartments late last year.

But those days are about to end, some experts say. Renters will see the supply of available apartments shrink significantly this year, they say. As that happens, free rent and other discounts offered by landlords will disappear and rents will rise, the experts say.

The vacancy rate for Colorado Springs-area apartments climbed to 10.8 percent during the fourth quarter of 2007, 2.2 percentage points higher than the third quarter, according to a study by University of Denver business professor Gordon Von Stroh. His quarterly reports are conducted for the Apartment Association of Southern Colorado, the Colorado Division of Housing and several other sponsors.

Apartment vacancies typically inch up late in the year, when students, for example, go off to school, Von Stroh said.

Another possible reason for the fourth-quarter increase: Von Stroh’s survey might have been conducted at a time after several thousand Fort Carson soldiers were deployed to Iraq, yet other troops hadn’t returned, said Ken Greene of Apartment Realty Advisors in Denver, one of the report’s sponsors.

Still, as if to signal the market is poised to tighten up, the 10.8 percent vacancy rate was the lowest for any fourth quarter since 2001, according to Von Stroh’s research.

And because no apartment complexes are under construction and because thousands of additional Fort Carson troops are expected to begin arriving this year, Greene predicts the local apartment vacancy rate will fall to about 7 percent by the third quarter of 2008.

That’s when rents will rise and apartment incentives “will be gone all together,” Greene said.

Not everybody believes vacancy rates will drop as far and as fast, however.

State Housing Division Director Kathi Williams said the future of vacancy rates and rents will depend on the economy. If a local slowdown in home building continues, for example, the Springs might lose construction and retail workers who occupy apartments, which will forestall a quick drop in vacancies, she said.

But Greene said he took into account the slowdown in local job growth when making his forecast. Countering the loss of construction and retail workers, he added, might be the possibility that homeowners who have lost houses to foreclosure will rent apartments.

While 10.8 percent of apartments were vacant citywide in the fourth quarter, the rate was nearly 25 percent near Fort Carson in the unincorporated Security-Widefield areas and in the city of Fountain, according to Von Stroh’s report. The vacancy rate was as low as 7.3 percent in the Springs’ far northeast side.

Citywide, monthly rents averaged $703.82 in the fourth quarter, about the same as the third quarter and roughly $12 higher than the fourth quarter of 2006. 

By Rich Laden The Gazette

April 1,2008

Fort Carson soldiers bore the brunt of a surge of Shiite violence in Baghdad over the past week and were instrumental in restoring an uneasy calm to the city, commanders said today.

In six days of fighting in and around Sadr City, 36 soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were wounded as Shiite fighters battled American and Iraqi forces at checkpoints around the enclave in eastern Baghdad.

With only two attacks today, down from a peak of 78 a few days earlier, it appeared a truce was holding, but soldiers remained wary.

“We’re trying to honor that cease-fire ourselves,” said Col. John Hort, the brigade’s commander who directed an offensive to seal off Sadr City and kill rocket and mortar teams with air and missile strikes.

Hort spoke to reporters via satellite.

The battles in Baghdad started after the Iraqi government cracked down on Shiite fighters in the southern city of Basra. Hort saw trouble brewing and last week ordered his soldiers to park their Humvees and prepare for battle in heavily armored M-1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

On March 25, Shiites poured out of Sadr City and overwhelmed four of the eight Iraqi-manned checkpoints that ring it, Hort said.

At the same time, Shiites fired volleys of rockets from Sadr City into the Green Zone, the seat of Iraqi government and home to the American embassy.

“They had a problem on the first day,” Hort said of the brigade’s Iraqi allies who lost the four checkpoints that control traffic into Sadr City, which is ruled by cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr.

The brigade’s soldiers fought back and rapidly reclaimed the lost ground using the firepower of tanks and Bradleys. But they faced repeated attacks on the checkpoints as radical militias worked to expel the Americans.

“In the past five days, we’ve had some very heroic work out there,” Hort said.

In one incident, a 3rd Brigade convoy came under attack, and a Bradley damaged by a bomb was set ablaze. A medic from another vehicle rushed through heavy enemy fire and pulled the crew of nine from the burning Bradley and helped treat their wounds.

When the Bradley crew was treated at a hospital, the medic needed care, too, Hort said.

“We found out the medic probably had the worst injuries of all of them,” Hort said.

In addition to the brigade’s three-dozen wounded, three soldiers from a Germany-based unit working with 3rd Brigade were killed while battling in Sadr City.

While soldiers worked to hold the checkpoints, the brigade also focused on stopping the rockets that flew from the Shiite enclave.

The brigade used unmanned aerial vehicles, essentially remote-controlled spy planes, along with other Air Force and Army aircraft to keep up constant surveillance of Sadr City. The brigade’s artillery battalion, working in the Green Zone, used its sophisticated artillery-spotting radar to pinpoint the origin of rockets that had been launched.

Hort said precision was key in killing the insurgents firing the rockets. Missiles, including the $60,000 Hellfire that can be launched from planes and helicopters, were used against the rocket teams.

“We make every effort to not do collateral damage to any civilian who might be around the rockets,” Hort said.

The brigade’s top enlisted soldier said the six days of fighting showed how well the soldiers can move from the rebuilding work they have pursued since they arrived in Iraq in December to all-out combat.

“It was an easy transition,” Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Dailey said.

The brigade’s battalions in Baghdad have spent most of their time working on issues such as restoring electricity and fostering business growth. Those efforts could resume soon if peace holds, Hort said.

Fighting ebbed today after Al-Sadr ordered his Shiite militiamen to stop fighting.

The Fort Carson soldiers stopped their offensive.

“Our intent is to not continue to press this fight unless something changes,” Hort said.

The break in hostilities leaves a significant, armed militia under Al-Sadr’s control in the Shiite enclave.

Soldiers, Dailey said, are hoping that politics rather than rifle fire brings a lasting peace to a land where fighting has bred more violence.

“They know violence is a no-win situation for anybody,” Dailey said. “They understand the cause and effect it will have.”

By Tom Roeder