OCEANPORT — Attracting jobs to Fort Monmouth is the focus of the former Army base’s redevelopment plan and may cost the borough one of its major employers, according to a borough official.

Oceanport Councilman Joseph Irace said in a recent interview the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority’s (FMERA) push to attract jobs may result in the borough’s second largest taxpayer, CommVault, a data software company, moving from the borough to the Tinton Falls portion of the fort property.

“It seems that [Comm- Vault] are going to be poached out of Oceanport and moved to Fort Monmouth,” he said. “I don’t understand the theory behind that, I don’t understand why you would give somebody tax breaks to move three miles away.”

Dani Kenison, press contact for Comm- Vault, located on Route 36, said the company is not prepared to comment on the potential move of its operation, which employs 540 people.

“At this point we are not making any public statements to confirm or deny that,” she said in an interview. “I can’t substantiate that either way.”

Irace said the prospect of a business leaving the borough looms large because Oceanport currently has a much bigger residential than commercial footprint.

“We don’t have many businesses. When you look around our biggest employer is Monmouth Park, our second biggest employer is CommVault,” he said.

“It’s a residential community; there are not many large ratables,” he added. “These are the things that can hurt us the most moving forward.”

Irace said that moving CommVault to Fort Monmouth might give the appearance that FMERA is creating jobs, but in reality that is not the case.

“What are we creating? You are not creating anything; you are just moving [jobs],” Irace said. “It is not a net gain by any stretch of the imagination, and I just wish they’d take a long-term view of this.

“I’d rather have them create [jobs] organically based on what the need is.”

According to Irace, the optimal redevelopment strategy for the fort, which closed in September, is to bring in higher education in the form of a technology college on the borough’s 419 acres of Fort Monmouth land.

“I really think it is time for outside-thebox thinking,” he said. “I’ve said to different members of FMERA the idea of a tech center, a college.”

He went on to say that if different colleges could partner with nearby Monmouth University, West Long Branch, in creating a campus on Fort Monmouth, that would create long-term jobs.

Irace also said that the tech college would be a bigger boost to the local economy than an office complex.

“Why are we not looking in the direction where we create long-term viable jobs rather than putting another office complex in Fort Monmouth?” he asked. “There are office spaces vacant all over the county.”

Irace explained that borough officials can offer development ideas for Fort Monmouth but their role is limited.

“I don’t know how much we can actually do because at some point it has to [be put out to public] bid,” he said. “We can go out to colleges, we can call and say this land’s great, but we can’t sit down and negotiate with these people.

“When push comes to shove, it has to go through the [request for proposals] process.”

In a November interview, FMERA Executive Director Bruce Steadman said that the first phase of the fort’s redevelopment would include the Charles Wood Area, which includes all of the Tinton Falls land and a portion of Eatontown’s.

Oceanport’s land, which is entirely located on the Main Post, would be included in the second phase of development and there is no timeline for the beginning of that phase.