Effects of Possible Base Closure Assessed : Point Mugu: Most say shutting the naval station, or transferring most of its jobs elsewhere, would test the area’s economic resilience. But others suggest the region might be able to take it all in stride.

It took no precise calculation for Tom Davidson to figure what the possible shutdown of the Point Mugu naval base would mean to him.

After 27 years in Ventura County, the director of a defense contractor’s Camarillo office said he and 180 other employees would have to pack up and follow their work to a new military base.

“We think this county offers a quality of life that’s hard to duplicate anywhere else,” said Davidson, 52. “But that would certainly force us to relocate. And I don’t think any of us is looking forward to it.”

After the federal base-closing commission added Point Mugu to its target list Wednesday, those fighting to save the weapons testing station, and those who depend on it, said life without the county’s largest employer would be more difficult.

“It’s certainly on the order of devastating,” said Cal Carrera, a defense industry executive and co-chairman of the county’s task force to save the base.

That task force estimates that full closure of Point Mugu could cost the county 18,000 jobs, 19,000 residents, $600 million in annual income and $1.3 billion in sales each year.

And while independent analysts say those figures are gross estimates, there is a near consensus that closing Point Mugu, or transferring most of its 9,000 base jobs elsewhere, would test the county’s economic resilience.

About 100 private companies with thousands of local employees--most in Camarillo and Oxnard--would lose defense contracts or be forced to relocate to keep them.

Such movement would result in 3,600 residences flooding the local housing market as 7,000 workers lose their jobs and relocate, according to task force estimates. About 2,000 civilian workers would be expected to stay in the county.

Most of these workers are engineers and technicians--with pay averaging $55,500 a year. And the loss of their purchasing power would bleed merchants in Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo in particular.

“It would be a very critical loss for half a dozen reasons,” said Carolyn Leavens, president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. and a task force co-leader. “And I don’t think anyone has any idea how many of these people have been volunteering at schools as coaches and at service clubs,” she said. “They are really good citizens in their communities.”

Others, however, say it is far too early to fixate on forecasts of hard times ahead. And still others suggest that Ventura County might even be able to take Point Mugu’s closing in stride.

“We’re talking about the county’s largest employer downsizing, and the impact is likely to be significant,” said Mark Schneipp, director of the Economic Forecast Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“However, if it occurs gradually, you won’t notice it as much,” he said. “And that’s probably the scenario you will see. . . . Although the numbers are very large, Ventura County has lost 14,000 to 15,000 jobs in the last four or five years, and have we really felt decimated?”

There are a total of about 300,000 jobs in the county, he said.

Schneipp also noted that task force estimates, though not unreasonable, are based on a computer model commissioned by the Department of Defense.

“It’s a generic type, boilerplate thing,” he said of the model. So the estimates are very rough and do not take into consideration the specifics of Ventura County, he said.

For instance, Schneipp said he did not believe that 18,000 jobs might suddenly disappear from the local economy and that 19,000 residents would move away.

“The Navy would never just close the (entire) base down at one time,” he said. “And hundreds or thousands (of workers) are just going to retire and stay or get an alternative job in the county.”

Nor have the job-creating activities that might develop at the closed Navy base been factored into the task force’s equation, Schneipp said.

The push toward a regional airport at Point Mugu might be accelerated, and that could prompt the expansion of nearby business parks, he said.

“It may open up significant opportunities for Ventura County over time,” Schneipp said.

Even those who have lobbied hardest against closing the Point Mugu facility--and the Navy base at Port Hueneme--say recent military cuts have prompted them to begin planning for a future with a Navy presence less than today’s 20,000 civilian and military workers.

County Supervisor Maggie Kildee, a task force adviser, insisted that plans for Point Mugu’s conversion are premature. But she also noted that Monterey County quickly transformed a closed Army base into a state university a couple of years ago.

“I think we can work this to our advantage for the long-term, though for the short-term lives would be disrupted,” she said. “We have a little time. . . . I think it would take five or six years (to close) anyway.”

Carrera and Leavens, task force co-chairs, are both members of a county-sponsored committee that has begun to discuss the county’s shift away from the military as a main employer.

“First of all, we would try to generate sufficient jobs to counter the closure,” Carrera said. “We’ve got to create new companies and expand companies. . . . Since we have so many high-tech people, there is a real product here we can sell.”

Leavens said a closure order would quickly shift county priorities.

“We would immediately begin to think about how can we convert these people to civilian jobs, and how we can reuse that land.”

A commercial airport at Point Mugu “would be a much more realistic possibility” without the base’s world-class runways being used jointly by the military as the Navy has proposed, she said.

And there is the potential that classes at a new state university in Camarillo could be offered at Mugu until the new campus is up and running early in the next century.

“Consider the Mugu Lagoon for ecological studies as perhaps part of the new university,” Leavens said.

On Wednesday, however, most people whose lives are entwined with the base were thinking about how to keep it open, not how to use it should it be closed.

Base supporters plan to argue their case at regional hearings in Northern California within two weeks and again before the base-closure commission in Washington. The commission must submit its final list of recommended base closures to President Clinton by July 1.

At Tom Davidson’s company, Computer Sciences Corp. in Camarillo, closure would mean that 180 of 200 local employees would have to follow the company’s two weapons contracts to another location. Maybe 20 workers would stay to service a small contract at the Port Hueneme base.

Such a move, Davidson said, would mean leaving behind nearly three decades of life on the Oxnard Plain. He was head of aircraft maintenance at Point Mugu, moved on to a second career in engineering and raised his six children, coaching Little League in his spare time.

And as families such as his relocate, “the county will lose these volunteers who give time and money,” he said. “And that is going to be a great loss.”

Evelyn Bobbitt-Moore, an administrative assistant at VSE Corp., another Camarillo engineering firm, said talk of Point Mugu’s possible closure reminds her of 1989, when she lost her job with another defense contractor that had lost its Navy contract.

This time, she and husband Robert, an engineer for another Point Mugu contractor, believe they might be pushed into an early retirement in Alabama.

“My husband said, ‘Are you ready to move to Huntsville?’ ” she said. “All we can do now is just hope and pray.”

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