Pentagon eyes change at HanscomIdeas include turning site over to developer
The arrangement, one of several options the Base Realignment and Closure Commission will review this spring, would open Hanscom for commercial redevelopment or housing, leading to the transfer of uniformed personnel and military contractors who now operate the base. It would also force military retirees who rely on some of its services to find other means. But under the arrangement, the 846-acre site would still house some military tenants and in the process save many of the high-tech jobs tied to the base that Massachusetts politicians fear would be lost if Hanscom were closed and its activities moved elsewhere, they said. The Pentagon could also decide to transfer other military units and defense contractors to Bedford under such a privatization plan, saving the Pentagon money and keeping the Hanscom community afloat. Other options, officials say, include keeping the base in government hands and bringing in additional military units from other locations around the country. Worst-case scenarios include pulling up stakes entirely, or an unlikely decision to shut down the base and let it sit instead of selling it. ''The main reason Hanscom is still a functioning entity is the Air Force's need for access to the intellectual skills of MIT, its related laboratories like Lincoln Laboratories, and various tech companies along Route 128," said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant who is advising New England officials on how to make the case for saving several military bases expected to be on the chopping block. ''However, you can maintain access to all of those resources without actually having a base," Thompson said. ''You just need the people in the area." Thompson says he has not seen the Pentagon list of base proposals that will be reviewed beginning in May, but confirmed that Pentagon officials are eyeing Hanscom as a candidate for major changes. ''Why pay for all that upkeep at an old facility when you can just rent?" said one Pentagon consultant who asked not to be named and has been briefed on the commission's marching orders from the Defense Department. Whether Hanscom, the nearby Army research center in Natick, and other New England bases will close has been a burning question for the surrounding communities and the Hub's high-tech industry and academic institutions. Local officials, who have been meeting monthly and have hired a contractor and an attorney to advise them in the event the base closes, say that keeping a portion of the base open while closing the rest of it could complicate their planning. ''If they're going to do it partially, what's the difference?" asked Sheldon Moll, a Bedford selectman and a member of the Hanscom Area Towns Selectmen, a group looking into the base's closure. ''In a partial closing, the concern from the towns and the amount of planning that needs to be done is equal to or even greater than if the base were closed altogether." Right now, the four towns that have jurisdiction over the land at Hanscom -- Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, and Bedford -- have a complex relationship with the base. The base's children go to school in Lincoln and Bedford; Lincoln supplies the base with water, and Bedford takes care of the sewage. The military pays the towns for their services, and there are about 850 privately owned homes on the base. If the base's operations are eliminated or reduced, ''we would have a lot of questions," said Sara Mattes, a Lincoln selectwoman and the chairwoman of HATS. ''What would happen with all this privatized housing? Who would live in it? Who would school those children? We don't know any of that." Residents and officials from the four towns had a meeting scheduled for tonight in Lincoln to discuss the base. Led by Governor Mitt Romney, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and other local officials, the state has proposed to invest more than $400 million in public and private funds to expand the research capacity of Hanscom as an incentive for the Pentagon to keep the base open. Hanscom is home to the Electronic Systems Center, the government-funded Mitre Corporation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Labs, all leaders in next-generation communications and intelligence systems. The state investment plan could create 5,000 new, high-paying jobs, more than doubling the 4,200 military and defense contractor personnel that now work at Hanscom. The base narrowly survived two previous rounds of base closings, in 1993 and 1995. As the Pentagon puts the final touches on its list of bases to close or realign, however, some officials are predicting that Hanscom's fate could fall somewhere between those options. One analyst believes more bases will survive this round, but in much different forms. ''We think that realignment is going to be a bigger part of this than in the past," said Ken Beakes, vice president of Business Executives for National Security, a Washington-based public interest group. Officials cite the success of the Naval Air Warfare Center in Indianapolis as a possible model. Like Hanscom, it was a mainstay of the local economy for more than 50 years. Before the 1993 base closings, the city proposed privatizing the base -- maintaining the Navy's mission but hiring someone to run the operations for the government, including maintenance and security. An outside contracting firm took over operations, and the city was able to keep most of the 2,800 workers, saving the Navy millions of dollars. The private operator also increased employment by 50 percent within a decade. This time around, however, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will make the call on privatizing all or portions of Hanscom. Rumsfeld is preparing proposals for review by the commission, which has been asked to come up with an estimated 25 percent contraction of domestic military facilities. The commission itself does not have the authority to make those decisions, according to Pentagon officials. Yet specialists say Massachusetts' proposal to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to keep Hanscom open could put the base in a good position: The Pentagon retains the base's mission but gets the costly overhead of running it off its budget. Hanscom, specialists say, is in a unique position for realignment. Opened in 1941 as a traditional air base, it hasn't housed a fighting unit in years and costs the government millions of dollars to run. Yet, cutting-edge, 21st century research is conducted there in conjunction with the Boston area's nearby high-tech sector that would be difficult to replicate. ''Our design is flexible, so we give them the room to expand and they figure out how they want to do it," said Chris Anderson, president of the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative, which put together the state proposal to expand Hanscom. ''We have succeeded in overcoming the largest hurdle: flipping the perception in Washington that we can't expand the mission. Whether there is an Air Force base with maintenance, security, and other infrastructure items is secondary to our goal of retaining and expanding the mission," he said. According to the legislation establishing the 2005 commission, there are six options for how bases might be treated. By September, when the commission makes its final recommendations to the president and Congress, bases could be slated to: remain open in their present form; remain open and get new missions and personnel, depending on their value to future military requirements; close outright; be realigned to cut jobs and missions; or shuttered indefinitely but remain in government control. The last option is to keep the jobs and missions in place in the absence of a military-owned facility. ''That's within the realm of possibility," said Anderson. ''We'd
consider it a win. I think the fact that everything about [the commission]
is so closely held means that everything will be a surprise." |
WASHINGTON -- One of several ideas the Pentagon is considering for
Hanscom Air Force Base is to turn it over to a private developer, then
rent space on the sprawling site in Bedford, allowing the military to
continue working on its cutting-edge technologies, according to top armed
forces consultants and officials familiar with Pentagon deliberations on
base closings.