Local native manages massive development

Fred Davis (Submitted photo) [Click to enlarge]

How big?

Ten billion dollars big.

No, that wasn't a misprint. Billion, with a "B."

Davis, a program manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is supervising the project managers constructing what amounts to a new high-rise city at U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, about 50 miles south of Seoul, Korea.

The U.S. Army has agreed with the government of South Korea to consolidate the U.S. military presence there, closing various units north of Seoul and relocating the existing U.S. military headquarters from Seoul to Garrison Humphreys. When the project is finished, six to eight years from now, more than 45,000 people will live and work there -- just a few hundred more than the entire population of Bedford County according to the most recent Census estimate.

Garrison Humphreys as it existed before the project was basically a post for single soldiers. Davis and those working with him must turn it into a family-friendly community. The development will include 440 major facilities, from high-rise family apartments to new schools, shopping, chapels and on and on. Currently, Garrison Humphreys has only an elementary school; middle and high school students must be transported by bus to schools 45 minutes away.

Not surprisingly, the original footprint of Garrison Humphreys wasn't quite large enough for all of this new development. The Korean government has made 2,328 acres of rice paddies available, and 11 million cubic feet of soil will have to be brought in to raise the site above the water table. That will leave the soil highly compressible; if the Corps were to begin building on the new site without some sort of remedy, new construction would settle by up to two feet over a period of years. So special pre-fabricated vertical drains are being used to remove water from the soil as it is compressed.

But it's more than just a construction project; it's a collaboration between two governments, two different cultures. Davis must coordinate with the Korean government and with a variety of different U.S. offices and agencies on individual projects and on big picture issues.

Davis first visited Korea in 1977, when he was a first lieutenant in the Air Force. When he returned in 2006, he was struck by the rapid progress the country had made in less than three decades.

"Korea has now developed into a very ... modern country," he said in a telephone interview. The country has a modern, high-tech infrastructure -- in fact, Davis can't help noticing that Korea seems to have stronger and more universal cell phone signal strength than the U.S., even in tunnels and places where an American might expect to lose a signal. Some of this, he says, is because population density makes it cost-effective to roll out things like broadband Internet access.

Davis and his wife, who also works for the Corps of Engineers as secretary to the District Commander, live in a comfortable 1,600-square-foot apartment, Their children, now grown, live back in the states.

Davis is a 1969 graduate of Central High School. He earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and his master's through an extension program with Golden Gate University. He's the son of Fred and Betty Davis of Shelbyville and the brother of architect John Davis of Davis-Stokes Collaborative.

Fred Davis fondly recalls his days in Bedford County, including Saturday matinees at the Capri Theater and a homecoming parade in 1968 when he helped with an award-winning 4-H Club float. Davis said the terrain in Korea actually reminds him somewhat of Bedford County.

"As I have traveled around I am amazed with the number of people who have been to Shelbyville for the horse show, or just traveling through," said Davis in an e-mail. "They all have good things to say."

For now, though, his attention is on turning Garrison Humphreys into a community of tomorrow.

"This is an exciting, fast-moving program," he wrote, "with never a dull moment."