At the beginning of the year, Congress approved an omnibus defense bill that included language supporting economic development efforts at Camp Navajo, including the transfer of federal land to state control.

Getting approval for the transfer of close to 3,000 acres of land owned by the U.S. Army at Camp Navajo to be owned and managed by the State of Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs has long been a hurdle to the project.

“We really have worked for more than five years to get us to this point,” said Julie Pastrick, president of the Northern Arizona Military Affairs Council. “Without some of the lobbying and the trips to D.C. and the leadership of Senator (Martha) McSally and Senator (Kyrsten) Sinema, we wouldn't be where we are.”

The future of the bill was briefly thrown into doubt after a presidential veto, but in the end Congress voted to override President Donald Trump's decision.

Once the land is managed by the state, it should allow for private investment and businesses to locate in and around the camp. To this point, private investment has been largely impossible, mainly due to the intricacies of how the army manages its property.

But exactly which acres will be transferred and what kinds of business may end up locating on the base is yet to be determined.

Many of those questions may be worked on by Matrix Design Group.

This week, the group was brought on by the county for $820,000 to follow up the Joint Land Use Study. Completed about two years ago, that project brought officials with Coconino County, Flagstaff, Camp Navajo and the Naval Observatory together and looking toward the future.

And now, Matrix will begin working on the implementation of that study, County Community Development Director Jay Christelman told the board of supervisors this week.

That work is scheduled to continue through 2021 and into early 2022 and will involve various stakeholders and the public, according to county documents.

The work will include far more than only economic development within Camp Navajo. The project will also involve gathering and compiling data on non-compliant lighting for the city and county around the Naval Observatory, which relies on dark night skies to complete it missions.

“That will greatly help our joint dark sky specialist Mark Stento, which is the joint city-county funded position to really help him do his job more efficiently, more effectively. So very excited about that,” Christelman told the board.

Pastrick said she was pleased to see the county move forward with the contract and that the Northern Arizona Military Affairs Council would continue to be involved in the effort.

She said the council has been in contact with a number of companies that have expressed interest in locating facilities in the camp, be they defense contractors or related to the forest industry. In part, Pastrick said that interest is a result of the locations many assets including increased levels of security, nearby secure storage facilities and its location near both the BNSF railway and Interstate 17.

“We're a smaller military base than a lot of those in southern Arizona. But now we have a chance to move in a new direction and prove that we have an economic base here in northern Arizona that is going to be very attractive to all different types of industries,” Pastrick said.