SCBIZ Daily Staff

COLUMBIA -- Eight hundred fifty new family housing units are coming at Fort Jackson, thanks in part to a bond offer being made this month.

The project will bring new townhomes and single-family residences to the base. It will build 610 replacement homes, with the rest being conversions or renovations.

The project is being privately developed by Balfour Beatty Military Housing Development LLC, of Newton Square, Pa. In August, the firm’s subsidiary also began managing the family housing at Fort Jackson, a service it provides at 15 other U.S. bases.

Bond rating service Fitch’s this week assigned a rating of “AA-” to the Fort Jackson project, an upward revision from “A” this July. Fitch considered Balfour Beatty’s experience in completing military housing projects and Fort Jackson’s minimal risk of base closure in the revised assessment, the company said in a release. The bond offer should close on or about Sept. 29.

This project also continues a federal trend of privatization of military housing. The 1996 Military Housing Privatization Initiative encouraged the investment of private capital to boost the quality of on-base housing.

Fort Jackson trains more than 50,000 soldiers every year, and is the nation’s busiest basic training facility.