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News Index
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Officials Hold Out Hope for Future Hanscom Growth (Boston Globe)
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By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent | September 1, 2005
Last week's rejection of a multimillion-dollar expansion plan that would have brought more than 1,000 new jobs to Hanscom Air Force Base doesn't diminish the base's continued benefits to the region, local officials and defense contractors said.
The officials also held out the possibility that the Bedford base could grow sometime in the future, based on Defense Department needs.
Expanding the base ''would have been icing on the cake, but the most important thing is that we still have the cake," said Sara Mattes, a Lincoln selectwoman and chairwoman of the Hanscom Area Towns Selectmen group. It is made up of officials from Bedford, Concord, Lexington, and Lincoln, the four towns surrounding the base.
Getting ''additional people at Hanscom would have been a bonus, but the number would have been a small blip on the big radar screen," Bedford Selectman Sheldon Moll said. ''You have to remember that the air base is responsible for about 30,000 jobs in the area."
Moll's figure refers to base personnel as well as employees of companies who work on Air Force contracts. The base has 1,780 military personnel, 1,631 civilian workers, and 2,525 contractors.
It is now especially comforting, the officials said, that Hanscom's role as a premier electronic warfare systems center is secure for the foreseeable future, since further rounds of base closings nationwide are not being discussed.
''This was supposed to be the mother" of all base closings and realignments, ''so I would think there wouldn't be any further action taken until 10 years from now, at the earliest," said Cort C. Boulanger, spokesman for the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative, the lobbying group that waged a major campaign to preserve military installations. The group is cochaired by Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
In May, the Hanscom base and the US Soldier Systems Center in Natick were left off the Pentagon's list of facilities recommended for closure. The list was then referred to a nine-member federal review board, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.
At the time, the Pentagon also said it would bring more than 1,000 workers to Hanscom by shifting personnel from air bases in Ohio and Alabama.
But last week, as the commission was wrapping up its findings, the panel said it had shelved the shifting of personnel because these people were not critical to the base's core research-and-development mission.
At the same time, the commission let stand plans to relocate 200-plus specialists at two Hanscom research laboratories to Air Force installations in Ohio and New Mexico. These moves will be made from two to six years after the base closure process has been completed.
No further changes to the Hanscom base's operations are contemplated as the commission is set to submit its findings to President Bush a week from today. Bush has until Sept. 23 to approve or reject, but not change, the commission's recommendations.
If he backs the commission's findings, they become binding 45 legislative days later. If not, then the commission has until Oct. 20 to come up with revised proposals.
Leaders of this state's defense technology initiative thought they had the most original plan for assuring an expanded role for the Hanscom air base well into the 21st century.
Released last year, the plan showcased Hanscom's ability to add 619,184 square feet of space to its current 811,468 square feet. Then early this year, the Legislature authorized $242 million in bond money for expanded office space. Later, the Defense Department pledged $131.3 million for the base expansion effort.
Now all expansion is off. ''But the main thing is that we showed that a major exp
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Video: May 16 Breakfast with Congresswoman Tsongas at Mercury Computer Systems (7/7/08)
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Bay State Officials Target Air Force Cyber R&D Dollars (1/4/08)
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Base Realignments Lead Tech Firms to Ocean State (11/20/07)
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