By Harry Levins

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. - This Army post bristles with tough, brawny men wearing boots and camouflage fatigues.

Except in one isolated corner. In that corner of Fort Leonard Wood, in a red-brick, one-story building, the men wear beards and bellies. What's more, they sport "nerd packs" in their shirt pockets.

That's the look at the University of Missouri Technology Park at Fort Leonard Wood. But for all of the unmilitary atmosphere, the people in the center say it's a perfect match for the Army.

The center aims to bring together scholars, soldiers and business executives, all to swap ideas and generate knowledge, and jobs. It's a high-tech research center that's just 30 miles away from the techies at the University of Missouri at Rolla - and right at home with the Army.

Some background: The center (so far, it's a single building of 18,000 square feet) was built with money from the state of Missouri and the University of Missouri system. It sits on a 62-acre site along the edge of the post's cantonment area, with hopes of expanding someday to 250 acres.

This first building houses 18 tenants, most of them small, high-tech businesses, each with a handful of employees - a total of about 60 so far. A second building in the works would house tenants with 10 or 12 workers, with future expansion designed for even more.

"We're really looking for people who want to do military-oriented research," says Ron Selfors, chief of the Fort Leonard Wood Regional Commerce and Growth Association - and one of the tenants at the center.

Like the other civilian tenants, Selfors must undergo the time-consuming ritual of security checks each time he wants to enter Fort Leonard Wood through its main gate. That fussy drill - think of going to work every day by passing through a big airport and its lines and hassle - hardly sounds like the sort of environment that draws businesses.

On the other hand, the people at the center are quick to point out that companies doing military-oriented research have secrets that need guarding. At Fort Leonard Wood, the Army keeps scores of well-trained, well-armed guards on duty at any given time. Even better, the Army pays for the guards.

Some people might think that you'd have trouble attracting the best and the brightest out to - well, out to the boondocks of Missouri.

Selfors says that nationally, Fort Leonard Wood has a high name-recognition factor. After all, in the decades since World War II, generations of Americans have undergone basic training at the post. But for many, the experience did little to endear them to the Missouri Ozarks. "Not all the war stories are happy ones," Selfors concedes.

"Lost in the woods"

But Joseph Driskill of the Jefferson City-based Missouri Technology Corp. says that at the Pentagon, at least, Fort Leonard Wood has shed its image of bucolic isolation. Driskill says, "It's no longer Fort Lost-In-The-Woods."

Indeed, the center sells its rural setting as a bonus. Other similar centers at places like Water Reed Army Hospital in Washington house tenants in old buildings on cramped bases in big cities, with their high costs and high stress.

In turn, the Army has a bonus for the tech center - well-educated spouses looking for fulfilling jobs. By and large, such jobs have been hard to come by in this stretch of the Ozarks. In the civilian communities around the post, Selfors says, a real estate agency can easily hire a secretary who has a master's degree in science.

The center wants to lure that master's degree out of the real estate office - and attract the other degrees now put to unskilled work at places like McDonald's and Wal-Mart.

What's more, the center hopes to keep some home-grown talent at home. "Now, Rolla grads leave the region, because there are no jobs here," Selfors says. He hopes that the center can hang on to some of those grads, and their high-tech degrees.

The Rolla campus has a liaison to Fort Leonard Wood - Stephen H. Tupper, a West

Point grad and retired officer. He's looking even further into the future, toward something he calls the Leonard Wood Institute - a high-class research center like the Wright Brothers Institute at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

Says Tupper: "This is a place whose time has come."