The challenge of redeveloping Fort Gillem

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Fort Gillem as it looked in 2010, when the post was still active. Now shuttered, the old Army base is in the process of undergoing environmental cleanup prior to being redeveloped for business use.

April 2013 -- Fred Bryant, executive director of the Forest Park/Fort Gillem Local Redevelopment Authority, said that film studios were interested in this half mile long warehouse located on fort property.

The remnants of an ammunition point remains fenced in at Fort Gillem. For years, the state has been pressing the Army to clean up a plume of contaminated groundwater that flows from a toxic dump site at Fort Gillem underneath a residential neighborhood.

Marchman Lake is the largest lake on the base. Concentrations of volatile industrial solvents remain so high that there's a danger of explosive gases building up under homes. And the toxins continue to leach into a creek that runs through nearby neighborhoods.

Most of the old base contains abandoned warehouses.

The remnants of an ammunition point remains fenced in at Fort Gillem. The EPA's scientists were eager to list the property as a Superfund site. That alarmed local officials, who, while recognizing the need for a more aggressive cleanup, worried that a Superfund designation would scuttle their plans to redevelop the decommissioned base as an industrial park.

Meanwhile, residents may not even be aware of the full extent of the dangers they face. Joy Lake owner William Turner charges a small fee for fishing at the lake, which is near the old Fort Gillem site. In 2013, engineers working on behalf of the military requested permission to drill in his lake for samples. But no one told him what they were sampling for, he said.

Turner recalls asking an engineer whether the fish were safe to eat. “He said, ‘Well, just don’t eat too many fish,’” Turner said.

April 2013: Eloise Belle Isle, who moved into the neighborhood in the 1950s, quit swimming in Joy Lake years ago. And forget fishing. “I wouldn’t even put a fishing hook in it, and I wouldn’t eat a fish out of there,” she said. Her husband worked at Fort Gillem.

April 2013 -- Debbie Elder lives on the north side of the fort with her mother. Several residents living near the Fort Gillem fence line said they have long suspected their properties have been contaminated, but say they, too, have been left with few answers.

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Fort Gillem as it looked in 2010, when the post was still active. Now shuttered, the old Army base is in the process of undergoing environmental cleanup prior to being redeveloped for business use.

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