Brunswick eyed for Reserve training site

BATH – There has been preliminary talk about the possibility of Brunswick Naval Air Station serving as the site of a regional Armed Forces Reserve Training Center.

Such a center would serve Reserve units of the Army, National Guard, Air National Guard and Marine Corps that are scattered between Westbrook and Bangor.

Tim Bowman, engineering supervisor for the National Guard, told members of the BNAS Task Force and the local Chamber Of Commerce that plans call for a 16-acre complex to be constructed at a cost of about $24 million.

The base commander has met with the incoming leader of the Maine National Guard, Brig. Gen. John Libby of Waterville, Bowman said Wednesday.

“We are trying to reduce the footprint of such a facility,” he said. “But we are hoping to be able to begin the project by Fiscal Year 2007 or 2008.”

Capt. Robert Winneg, commanding officer of BNAS, confirmed the talks with National Guard officials but described them as “preliminary.”

“This is a multistep process, and I haven’t yet talked to my supervisors in the Navy. I’m waiting for more final plans to be worked out,” he said.

Bowman said that plans

call for a 200,000-square-foot building to be shared by Reserve units of the Army, Air Force, National Guard and Marine Corps. If the center is built, it would mean communities like Westbrook, Gardiner and Bangor would lose their armories.

“Many of the armories in the state were built in the 1940s and 1950s,” Bowman said. “A new facility that could be shared by seven or eight units would fit in with a more regional approach.”

Bowman acknowledged that moving Reserve units out of established communities to Brunswick would impact those cities and towns, but that in the long run a regional training center makes sense.

Plans call for the facility to be funded predominantly

by federal dollars, thus saving the state the expense of

fixing the armories now in disrepair.

“The state budget crisis has seriously affected our ability to fix the old armories throughout the state,” he said.

The base already hosts a Naval Reserve Center that trains reservists from as far away as Massachusetts. Bowman said it might be possible to share some of the Reserve facilities already on the base.

Sen. Arthur Mayo, R-Bath, a member of the BNAS Task Force, said afterward that if such a Reserve center is built, “it would be good for the future of the base.”

The task force is preparing strategies to convince the federal Defense Department not to include the Brunswick base on its list for the next round of base closings due in 2005.