Most everything that isn't nailed down at Fort Monmouth, a U.S. Army base shuttered in 2011, will soon be sold to the highest bidder.
Over the course of October, thousands of office chairs, hundreds of filing cabinets, miles of aluminum railing and 241 rooms worth of dorm furniture will be sold. Most of the items up for bid will hold little appeal to the typical New Jersey family, unless they desire an electronic scoreboard, a 20,000 square-foot canvas sports building and industrial heating, cooling and power equipment.
The Asbury Park Press reports that three public auctions are scheduled for October — the first on Wednesday, then followed by sell-offs on Oct. 15 and Oct. 29. The auctions start with buildings on the western edge of the base, including one that housed the FBI's operations.
More than 5,000 people used to work at Fort Monmouth and much of the office furniture and support equipment sits unused in these vacant buildings.
Fort Monmouth officially closed three years ago this month, about six years after the U.S. Department of Defense's Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended that the fort be shut down in 2005. A planning commission was formed in 2006 to chart the future of the land. That commission was replaced by the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority in August 2010.
Earlier this year, FMERA signed The Auctioneers Group, an auction and appraisal firm with an office in Neptune, to a two-year contract (with a one-year extension) to sell the contents of buildings, but not the buildings themselves, as the Army divests more and more real estate to the authority. The auction's proceeds, minus the auctioneers' cut, will be directed toward the redevelopment effort.
"As they acquire (real estate), we will come in behind them and sell off whatever we can," said Peter Costanzo, a partner in The Auctioneers Group.
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Costanzo and the Auctioneers Group's other principal, Anthony Natoli, are expecting a diverse group of bidders, including recyclers who want some of the functionally obsolete equipment for parts, industrial purchasers who are interested in lightly-used and valuable backup generators, and "regular" folks who just want a glimpse inside the still-guarded fort, which is nearly 100 years old.
FMERA, according to a spokeswoman, intends to buy the remainder of the base from the Army. By the end of this year, they anticipate being able to offer additional chunks of land for purchase to developers.
