By RICARDO ZUNIGA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

CEIBA, Puerto Rico -- The Navy has closed its last base in Puerto Rico, a complex that served as a staging ground for U.S. interventions from Grenada to Haiti but fell into disuse after the military gave up a prized training area on the island of Vieques.

While 200 sailors and civilians will remain at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station to help in the transition, the base was transferred Wednesday to a special naval agency that will coordinate the closing process, spokesman Oscar Seara said. Navy security guards are among those staying.

"No longer is it Naval Station Roosevelt Roads," said Ted Brown, a Navy spokesman in Norfolk, Va.

The U.S. Caribbean territory's government has proposed turning the area into a cruise ship dock, commercial airport, tourist resort and light industrial park.

"This is the golden opportunity that Puerto Rico has to develop a mixed economic base," said Milton Segarra, Puerto Rico's economic development secretary.

In recent months, the Navy moved out thousands of troops and employees, along with bombs, torpedoes and other supplies. Officials said about 2,000 troops and civilian personnel were being moved or offered jobs elsewhere, while some 1,000 contractors were losing their base jobs.

"At the beginning, it's going to be difficult, but the town is going to grow and we can move on," said Jorge Cruz, who lives next to the base in the eastern town of Ceiba and complained about military planes at night.

In recent years, the base's main purpose was to oversee bombing exercises on the nearby island of Vieques, and tensions rose there in 1999 when two errant bombs killed a civilian guard.

A surge in protests followed, with opponents saying the bombing harmed the environment and the health of Vieques' 9,100 residents. The Navy denied it, but decided to close the range last year in the face of sustained protests and moved training to spots in the mainland United States.

With the closure, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba will be the only U.S. naval base left in the Caribbean.

Roosevelt Roads was commissioned in 1943 at the height of World War II. Navy historians say they believe it is named after former President Theodore Roosevelt and its roadstead, or anchorage.

The base was used as a support hub for U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983 and Haiti in 1994.

Roosevelt Roads comprises more than 13 square miles. The federal government has the first option on base property. Officials say the U.S. Army Reserve, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Postal Service and other programs have requested 250 acres.

Then the local government will have the option to request land, and the Navy will be able to sell other land to private buyers.

At least 4.6 square miles are ecologically valuable and will be set aside for conservation, said Luis E. Rodriguez, secretary of natural resources. The base is fringed with beaches that meet marshes and rocky outcroppings.

Rodriguez said the Environmental Protection Agency has identified at least 18 contaminated sites on the base requiring cleanup. The Navy says it will clean up contaminated sites before land is handed over.