New Castle County is set to introduce legislation that lawmakers hope will attract high-technology jobs to the western part of the county, as the Army prepares to centralize its military support operations in Aberdeen, Md.

With Newark and its suburbs only 30 miles from the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, officials are hopeful that many of the estimated 30,000 electronics engineers, computer programmers and other defense contractors due to relocate to the area during the next three years choose Delaware.

A survey conducted by the Department of Defense indicates that as many as 11 percent of workers are likely to relocate to Delaware. Another 33 percent say they’re undecided, but willing to commute as much as 45 minutes each way.

“This is an opportunity for us,” said Karl Kalbacher, who heads the county’s redevelopment office and led the drafting of the legislation. “It makes sense to us to try to provide ways to expedite the process and incentivize high-wage jobs to come here.”

With high-technology trades commanding high wages, attracting those kinds of jobs is key to maintaining a high-quality of life in the county, Kalbacher said.

“High wage jobs serve our tax base well and allows us to pay for services people want more of, like police, parks and libraries,” he said. “It also means more money for our public school systems.”

With the large majority of those relocating from Ft. Monmouth, N.J., Delaware could have an advantage in attracting those workers who wanted to stay as close as possible to their Garden State roots. There’s also the hope that those contractors who have spouses in the workforce may prefer Delaware because Wilmington is an employment center offering a wide range of job opportunities. Kalbacher said the county’s low property taxes and housing costs could also be an advantage.

“We receive phone calls on a weekly basis asking us about our tax rates, the services we provide and our overall quality of life,” he said. “For a variety of reasons, people seem interested in us.”

This week, County Executive Chris Coons is slated to visit Ft. Monmouth and pitch New Castle County to the Industrial Representatives Association – a group of executives representing the contractors and consultants working hand-in-hand with the military installation there.

“I think we in New Castle County should be doing all we can to either attract high technology-based business here or help them grow here,” he said. “I think it’s in the best interest of our community over the long-term.”

Incentives to be offered

If the county council ultimately approves the legislation, which first will be reviewed by the Planning Board in the coming months, any construction project with a significant research or technology will be fast-tracked through the county’s land use approval process in six to nine months. Other major projects can routinely take two years to gain county approval.

Additionally, votes on the rezoning for parcels targeted for high-technology development would be allowed at any time, not only during designated periods as is now the case. A 25 percent density bonus would also be offered as part of the legislation. The incentives would be available to any company bringing in research- or technology-based jobs to the state, not just to those associated with the military restructuring.

Councilwoman Stephanie McClellan (D-Newark) said she was supportive of offering incentives to encourage economic investment in her district, but cautioned that other things had to happen to maximize Delaware’s draw.

She said the University of Delaware would be a key player in attracting contractors through its willingness to provide research and other technical assistance to them. She also said transportation improvements were vital to making Delaware as palatable as it could be. “This ordinance won’t be as successful at it could be unless there’s reliable light rail service established between Newark and Aberdeen and unless something is done to shorten the wait time at the toll on Interstate 95,” she said. “Other actions have to be taken for this to work.”

Jeff Stone, director of infrastructure and intergovernmental relations for the Delaware Economic Development Office, agreed. He said a working group including realtors, developers, lenders, government officials and others meets regularly to discuss the obstacles in place to attracting contractors to the area.

One concern is making sure developers here know how to build secure buildings. Most military contractors’ buildings are Secure Compartmentalized Information Facilities – spy proof buildings that are both soundproof and have secure network features.

“They’re expensive to build and they’re outside the scope of what’s been done here in the past,” Stone said.

And while he admitted the state faced some infrastructure challenges when it came to sewer access and traffic, he said I-95 and U.S. 40 corridors could be far better off on the infrastructure front than Cecil and Harford counties, the two rural Maryland counties separating Aberdeen and Delaware.

While Baltimore is the nearest urban center, and could attract a significant percentage of the population relocating to Aberdeen, Stone argued that Newark had plenty of amenities and the small town appeal that many prefer over the big city.

“There are cultural amenities, recreational amenities, you’ve got a major university there,” he said. “It’s much more like Monmouth County than some of the other places they could go.”

Stone also said that he wasn’t sure Cecil and Harford counties would be able to build all the homes, roads and other infrastructure necessary before 2011.

“They’re going to see tremendous growth over a short period of time and its going to tax their infrastructure tremendously,” he said. “There’s tremendous sprawl pressure there.”

A numbers game

The Department of Defense estimates that of the 30,000 workers expected to relocate, 8,000 will have jobs on the base while 15,000 will work for contractors with offices off-base. The remaining 7,000 would likely work in non-military fields.

Stone, like Kalbacher, said New Castle County offers the most diversified job pool in the region. He said Wilmington’s banking industry and existing research companies like Astra Zeneca, DuPont, W.L. Gore and Hercules could be a significant draw.

But while economic development advocates like Kalbacher and Stone are hopeful about the prospects for New Castle County, others are downplaying the impact the base realignment will have here.

Dr. Ed Ratledge, director of the University of Delaware’s Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research, downplayed Delaware’s draw as an employment center.

“Delaware’s labor market is tight,” he said. “We’ve been at 3-4 percent unemployment for years now.”

Ratledge described the survey work that indicates interest in New Castle County among those in Ft. Monmouth as “quick and dirty” and said it was difficult to project the kind of lifestyle people would choose when relocating.

“You can make all the suggestions in the world but until we have better data, all we have to look at now is the pattern that currently exists and right now only about 2 percent of the people who work at Aberdeen are living in Delaware,” he said.

McClellan agreed.

“I’ve heard from enough people that we should not see this as an economic development angel that has fallen from the sky to save us,” she said. “We need to do what we can to attract economic development here, but I’m not sure about some of the expectations.”