Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993 TAG: 9305300093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA, LA. LENGTH: Medium
An economic disaster? Maybe not.
"I describe it as winning the lottery," said James Holderread, director of a board that is taking over the base in an effort considered a national model.
While some look at the base and see abandoned buildings, Holderread sees a dreamscape: a 2,600-acre, industrial-recreational-residential park complete with hospital, apartment complexes, stores, schools, airfields and high-tech repair shops - all waiting for the right tenants.
The federal government announced 31 base closures on April 12, 1991. A Washington think tank, Business Executives for National Security, studied the plans of 24 affected communities and found Alexandria's proposal to be the best response to offsetting the loss.
Other communities have taken notice.
"We have people visiting here from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Sacramento, California; from Carswell Air Force Base at Fort Worth - just all over the place," Holderread said.
Already, a trucking firm is running a school for drivers on the base. Three health-care companies are interested in taking over the acute-care hospital. A high-tech company is looking at a $2 million weights-and-measures lab on the base as a place to repair sophisticated oil field and industrial equipment.
Jim Meyer, an Alexandria engineer and one of the fathers of the board, called the England Authority, said the initiative will bring more than 2,200 civilian jobs to Alexandria within two years. He said the jobs are as big an economic boon as the 4,000 lost in the military closing.
"Military jobs are great," Meyer said. "But military people continue sending money to their banks back home."
While federal law requires the transfer of the base to the community, the community has to show that prospective industrial recruits can use moveable equipment, such as repair machinery in air hangars and lab and hospital instruments.
It was the foresight of Meyer and other Alexandria civic and political leaders that helped the area get an early start on preserving the base.
Meyer was president of the Chamber of Commerce for Central Louisiana when rumors surfaced in 1990 that England would be closed. He assembled a secret task force of 14 business leaders and four elected officials that quietly prepared for the closure, even as officials publicly pleaded for the base to be spared.
When England's death notice came, Meyer's task force was ready.
By October 1991, the authority got assurance from the Department of Defense that the state could eventually take possession of the base and its property.
by CNB