As Fort Stewart continues to have a significant impact on its surrounding communities and Coastal Georgia, its leaders also want to make sure the bonds between the post and its neighbors are strengthened.

Col. Marc Austin, the garrison commander for Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield, said it was an emphasis of post and 3rd Infantry Division commanding general Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie.

“We’ve turned engagements into relationships,” Col. Austin said.

Col. Austin, recovering from surgery after damaging an ankle and a knee in a backyard soccer game with his son, said the relationship between the installations and the communities should go beyond the payroll and economic numbers. He also noted Fort Stewart’s annual “Salute to Summer,” held in advance of the Independence Day holiday, is always open to the civilian community.

Col. Austin is in his second tour of duty at Fort Stewart, but he acknowledged there were some facets of the military-civilian relationship that were more apparent to him this time around.

“One of the things I did not appreciate the last time was how connected everything is,” he said.

Of the two bases, which the Army considers as one installation and has one budget for, Col. Austin added, nearly 70% of the soldiers reside outside its boundaries. Taking into account the number of married soldiers, and their children, plus a civilian workforce of nearly 1,800, “it’s about six figures of people living pretty much everywhere, but predominantly in Liberty County,” Col. Austin pointed out.

The economic impact of Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield is $5.8 billion annually, with the Hinesville metropolitan statistical area getting about $3.7 billion of that. The post also has a direct employment impact of nearly 28,000 in the Hinesville MSA.

Right now, there are nine barracks complexes under construction, at $30 million each, and a $60 million hangar project was just completed at Hunter. There are three more hangars on the Army’s to-do list.

“And that’s just building infrastructure,” Col. Austin said.

The military supports nearly 45,000 jobs in the region, and nearly one out of every six jobs in the region is tied to the installations. One of the first things Col. Austin did when taking command of the Fort Stewart garrison was to meet with Trip Tollison, CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority.

The Army starts working with soldiers who are either retiring or separating from the service nearly a year and a half before their end date about their post-service employment. Fort Stewart has one of the highest retention rates for soldiers leaving the Army, Col. Austin said.

“Our question is how can we get them out across the area?” he asked. “How do we get soldiers to stay here? What about the spouses? How do you threat them? How do you get them in? The school system does a good job of that. We’ve had spouses come back because of the way they were treated.”

There are other ways the military and civilian connection help each other, he noted. There are military life counselors at each of the Liberty County schools, allowing other school counselors to attend to other children. The post’s child development centers also have 1,000 kids enrolled, with another 200 on a waiting list. The CDCs on the installation alleviate the burden of space in the civilian community.

“Imagine if we didn’t have those,” Col. Austin said.

Fort Stewart and Hunter’s units also are active, either training here or on deployments. The 1st Brigade is in eastern Europe and the 3rd ID’s other combat maneuver brigade is slated to go there in the coming months.

“When we train, we push to the edge,” Col. Austin said. “We push as far as we can go in a safe and realistic environment.”

As the armored element of the Army’s rapid response force, the XVIII Airborne Corps, the division and its units can — and have been — called to duty on short notice.

“You expect us to be ready any time of the day, anywhere in the world,” he said. “Right now, the 3rd ID is the most advanced organization in the U.S. Army. There is not another division that is capable of doing what we do.”

The division has suffered two fatal accidents, one on Fort Stewart that claimed the lives of two soldiers and one in Lithuania that killed four soldiers. The installation recently received the investigative report on the first accident, a vehicle rollover in the western part of Fort Stewart’s vast training areas, and the loss of the four crew members of a M88 recovery vehicle remains under investigation.

Maj. Gen. Norrie and Command Sgt. Maj. Jonathan Reffeor, the division’s top enlisted adviser, went to Lithuania to console the troops affected.

“It’s tragic,” Col. Austin said. “It’s a tight knit community and they are hurting right now.” As another deployment continues and another beckons on the horizon, Col. Austin urged local residents to keep their soldier neighbors in mind — especially those families whose soldier isn’t coming home from work every night.

“When you see them, just ask them how they’re doing,” he said.

The installations’ location also is strategic not just for the Army but for the bases’ futures, Col. Austin pointed out. It’s an hour to the Savannah port, a little more than an hour to the Brunswick port and the ports of Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., are a little more than two hours away.

Should a ramp-up for military strength be needed, with National Guard and Army Reserve units called to active duty, they likely will report to Fort Stewart, where its rail connection and the nearby ports make deploying less of a logistical headache.

While Fort Stewart and Hunter may not be completely immune from another round of base realignment and closures, the advantages of the bases also give it plenty of cushion.

“There is no other installation that has these resources,” Col. Austin said.

The post also has partnered with Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia to help the many families of its youngest soldiers. Col. Austin also expressed his appreciation to Board of Education Chair Verdell Jones for including the leadership in the system’s search for a new superintendent.

“It’s pretty cool to be included in the conversation,” he said.

Col. Austin will relinquish his command this summer and take a new assignment in Virginia. But the connections with such as entities as Second Harvest and the school system are part of the relationships the commanders want to establish and deepen.

“That’s what I want to hand off,” he said. “I think we’re in a good place.”