On-base retail businesses provide convenience, profits

Private businesses provide a flow of cash to help fund some services for troops.
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) -- Hours before Lance Cpl. Joseph Duggan shipped out for Kuwait last week, he dropped by a FedEx shop and shipped a box of clothing and documents to his father.
He didn't have far to go from the barracks, since the packing store was right on base.
"It's easy to be able to take care of it during chow, or lunch time," said Duggan, 20, of Kirkland, Wash.
Soon, the 30,000 troops and families living on the East Coast's largest Marine base won't have to leave the grounds for an oil change, auto body work, or to store their belongings in a self-storage locker.
Though all those services can be found in neighboring Jacksonville, a city of 67,000, businesses that offer them are now moving on-base. There they are setting up shop alongside the reduced-cost post exchanges and commissaries that for decades have sold service members and retirees clothing, audio equipment and groceries.
Variety of businesses
At Camp Lejeune, 22 businesses -- including a travel agency, optician and car rental agency -- employ nearly 400 civilians and generate $17 million in annual sales. The on-base Domino's Pizza restaurant has been the 7,300-store chain's biggest seller in four out of the past five years, and rang up 2002 sales of $2.4 million, according to Domino's spokeswoman Holly Ryan.
The heavy traffic on the base means Dollar Rent A Car sees higher sales there than at in-town locations run by the same franchisee, said Linda Jones, vice president for operations of D & amp;S Auto Rental Inc. Jones declined to specify the sales of each location.
For the chance to reach a market of nearly 140,000 people that includes current and retired service members, their families and Defense Department civilian employees, private companies pay a cut of their profits to Marine Corps Community Services, a civilian agency that licenses businesses to operate on Marine bases.
"It's location, location, location -- any business will tell you that's what drives people," said Wayne West, who works for the agency recruiting businesses to come on-base at Lejeune.
Profits
For the year that ended Jan. 31, Camp Lejeune's ventures generated $1.1 million in profit on sales of $155 million.
That profit goes to underwrite base services that contribute to the morale, welfare and recreation of service members -- MWR in military jargon.
Such services -- which at Lejeune include an on-base marina, physical fitness facilities, and kiddie piano and karate courses -- are not fully funded in the military spending plans approved by Congress.
So West has become more aggressive in the past two years in welcoming private businesses onto the base to provide a steady flow of cash to subsidize such services.
"Obviously the need for the revenues to support our programs is very important," he said. "We don't consider profit an ugly word. We do need to make a profit to put it into our business."
Similar partnerships with private businesses have meant a 24-hour restaurant for Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Ga., and badly needed housing at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.
Invitations for businesses to set up shop on North Carolina's other military bases have mainly stuck to fast food restaurants.
More variety
The exception is Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, which has a variety of sandwich shops as well as a rental car agency, a video store, a vitamin shop, and a scuba dive shop, said Bob Kenward, Cherry Point's business marketing director.
Sometimes, businesses in neighboring military towns don't welcome competition from on-base businesses.
Though franchises such as Burger King and Jiffy Lube can avoid cannibalizing their off-base outlets by approving or refusing plans for base locations, others don't have that power.