US Army Forces Command prepare for move to Fort Bragg

ATLANTA

US Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson in Georgia is headed to Fort Bragg.

The command held an official sendoff ceremony Tuesday for its torch party advance team.

ABC11 Eyewitness News was there in Atlanta to get a better picture of where these folks are choosing to live near Fort Bragg.

Eleven communities that surround Fort Bragg have spent the past two years courting the troops and civilian workers at Fort McPherson.

Beginning August 1, they will start to see if their recruiting efforts paid off.

In a little more than a year, Fort McPherson will shut down and the people who work in the Georgia headquarters will move north and call Fort Bragg home.

During the next year, Ronna Garrett and her staff will oversee the move of nearly 3,000 civilian and military personnel.

Garrett will lead the advance team of about 50 soldiers and civilians. She says she plans to live in Fayetteville.

Advance Team Member Melanie Washington is recommending a number of communities to people who are making the move.

"I like Hope Mills because Hope Mills is an up and coming city," she said. "Every year we get improvements and something like that. But mainly a lot of them want to live a distance away from post. So I recommend the Sanford area or Southern Pines area also."

Advance team members Andrian and Denise Hobbs say they are choosing to live in Moore County for a number of reasons.

"The golfing community is always a plus," Adrain said. "We're looking for something with the pools as well. So Moore County offered that more than the other counties did."

"It's a place that we're going to call home, because here it's really fast-paced and we're looking forward to settling down into something a little slow and raise our kids in a home-style environment," Denise said.

"And just in case there is not someone standing at the state line waiting to great you... I'm going to go ahead and do it," BRAC Regional Task Force Director Greg Taylor said. "On behalf of all your new neighbors... welcome to North Carolina."

While 50 positions are moving with the advance party, more than half are unfilled positions. That means those jobs will be filled with people who live in North Carolina.

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