By Joni Simon
Contributing Writer

The city of San Antonio, the city of Fair Oaks Ranch, Bexar County, the U.S. Army and private developers will all participate in the first-ever joint land use study to regulate development along the fast growing Interstate 10 corridor and protect the increasingly vital military missions at Camp Bullis.

“We understand that we are ‘Military City USA’,” said San Antonio Councilwoman Diane Cibrian, who represents the city’s Northwest Side and who will chair the committee. “We want to protect the interests of the military in this community, while also acknowledging the property rights owner, and how we can work and co-exist cooperatively.”

Two issues are pushing this long-simmering issue to the front. Camp Bullis will become a key training facility for the estimated 4,500 new military trainees who will arrive in San Antonio by 2011 as the result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission’s order to consolidate all military medical training at Ft. Sam Houston, which runs Camp Bullis. In addition, the current real estate crunch has slowed but has by no means halted the extremely rapid development in far northwest Bexar County, development that has threatened the environmental face of Camp Bullis and at one point prompted the Army to warn that the future of its core missions in the San Antonio were being placed in danger. 

Fort Sam Houston has warned about environmental degradation, increased traffic and noise, and especially about increased light pollution, which compromises the ability of the military to conduct critical night vision training at Bullis.

Cibrian says the need for a joint land use study came up in 2007, when military officials objected to zoning which would have allowed additional development along Camp Bullis Road adjacent to The Rim shopping center.

“We brought the general at Ft. Sam to the table and we worked out a cooperative agreement to take out a finger tip of the development, so we could move forward and zone the land. This is the best example of how a community can come together,” she said.

Cibrian says both Thomas Enterprises, the developers of the Rim, and the Dominion and other homeowners associations, have expressed a desire to work with the city and county in putting together a long-term plan for future development near Camp Bullis.

“It’s very important that we protect the missions that we have here,” San Antonio City Councilman Louis Rowe said. “The military base at Camp Bullis was put here many years ago, and as our city has grown, it has grown around the mission. We need to make sure we give the military a place where they can train their medics under realistic conditions.”

Cibrian said the study will look at issues ranging from lighting to transportation to high rise development, and any other issues that could affect the military’s operations at Camp Bullis.

Brig. Gen. Robert Murdock (U.S. Army, Ret.), Director of the city of San Antonio’s Office of Military Affairs, will also be a part of the committee.

Camp Bullis is one of the most storied military instillations in the Southwest. It is named for General John Lapham Bullis, a commander of the legendary ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ — black and Seminole Indian units — who served in the West in the 1880s. 

It opened as a training and deployment site during World War I and latest served as a disposal site for weapons previously stored at the Arsenal on the San Antonio River, which is now the headquarters of H-E-B.

During World War II, Camp Bullis processed hundreds of thousands of draftees.  It began to be used as a training site for Army medics during the Vietnam War. The BRAC decision will vastly increase the number of soldiers, sailors, and other military medical personnel who will utilize Camp Bullis as a vital part of the Medical Education and Training Command, the new unit to be created to oversee all military medical training.