Developers feeling frosty about Loring

PRESQUE ISLE — While the snow piled up Thursday on the runways at Loring Air Force Base for the first time in 40 years, plans were being made for a telephone conference between reuse planners and air cargo developers who believe they’ve been coolly received by reuse officials.

The conference, scheduled for Monday, may determine whether airstrips built for national security will be a takeoff point for goods to former communist countries.

The entire base will be closed Sept. 30.

Joe Pratt, head of a consortium of developers with ties to the former Soviet Union and Central Europe, was not optimistic Thursday about a successful conclusion to their attempts to bring a 20-company air cargo venture to the base.

The president of Superior Export-Import and Assembly Ltd. in Chicago, said his group had received the runaround from Maine officials charged with finding a reuse for the base.

However, Arthur Thompson, chairman of the Loring Development Authority, said reuse officials were waiting for further details from the air cargo developers.

The LDA and various state agencies has spent $10,000 in flying the developers to Loring from Portland in January and in sending a delegation to Detroit in February, said Thompson. More than 500 man-hours have been spent on the air cargo project, he added.

“We’re perplexed at Mr. Pratt’s attitude,” said Thompson. “We have been waiting for two weeks for a written proposal from him and the consortium and we haven’t received it. We sent a professional team to negotiate and were ready to do something. It was their understanding that they were to get financial information and a plan of action, something to work on, but they reported that they just got more concepts.”

Pratt, spokesman of the 20-company consortium, expressed concern about reopening the runway after its Thursday closing. The last aircraft, a KC-135 tanker, left Loring on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, other closing bases were interested in air cargo, Pratt said.

Pratt said his companies were looking at northern tier bases that might not be as good as Loring. However, the reception was warmer there, according to Pratt.

“They (reuse officials) shot one messenger,” said Pratt, referring to Dick Weidel, director of leasing at CARGOAIRE in Baltimore, Md., who visited the base in October.

“I was the second messenger. I can’t put my finger on it. What is the hidden agenda here? Dick (Weidel) said I wouldn’t conquer the atmosphere up there. I thought if they saw all the companies they would be interested,” Pratt said.

Pratt, who puts companies and development opportunities together, has residences in Ohio, Michigan and Krakow, Poland. One office is at Economic Research Associates in Chicago, the consulting firm hired and then fired by Loring reuse planners to develop a reuse plan and strategy for implementation.

From 1964 to 1970, Pratt was involved in the recycling of military facilities at several national and international sites, including Bangor.

An ERA consultant introduced the group to Loring, said Pratt.

During the trip to Detroit, the Maine delegation was interested in information to be included in a future federal aviation study, according to Ron Roy, a state transportation official.

Details such as the amount of cargo to be shipped and when the operation would start were needed, said Roy, who also traveled to Detroit. The state officials also needed to know what attracted the developers to Loring, as opposed to other airports, such as Bangor Intentional Airport, Roy said.

Roy said the developers’ request for $1.8 million in federal funds for research and development was to be supported by data they were to provide to the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development.

The developers also wanted access to Maine’s congressional delegation to plug into federal funds for developing countries, said Roy.