Some of that money is coming to Maine, but it might not be enough to save Brunswick Naval Air Station.

BRUNSWICK – For this city within a city, times are booming.

The main street is lined with new buildings, surrounded by new asphalt and freshly dug earth. Construction workers’ trucks are as common as the white government-issue vans and pickups that fill the roads of every U.S. military base.

In the past four years, the Navy has spent more than $100 million at Brunswick Naval Air Station, creating hundreds of new homes, a massive hangar and new utilities. Old buildings have been torn down and replaced with modern, efficient structures.

Yet, the Pentagon may throw it all away.

Next spring, the Department of Defense is expected to announce the closure of up to one-quarter of its 425 bases. Locals fear the Brunswick base may be among them, despite the unprecedented investment.

Fears are prompted by the knowledge that too many prominent bases have already been shut down. Leaders worry that the criteria may favor other bases in states backed by more powerful politicians.

Even tens of millions of dollars might not be enough to protect the Brunswick base.

“It sure won’t be a decisive factor,” said retired Rear Adm. Harry Rich, who is part of a community-led task force working to save the naval air station.

A former P-3 Orion pilot, Rich commanded the Navy’s now-closed base in Bermuda. For a time, he also commanded every P-3 squadron in the Atlantic, including those in Brunswick.

The local base may survive the upcoming round of closures, he said. But it will be Brunswick’s strategic significance – as the Pentagon’s remaining active-duty air base in the Northeast – that would preserve it, he said.

The money being spent at Brunswick will likely be a footnote, Rich said.

Adding the numbers

The sums are staggering.

Current or recently completed projects include $17.7 million for the construction of a 500-bed barracks; 126 units of family housing at a cost of $19 million; $5.9 million for improvements to one of the two runways; $9.8 million for a new, eight-story control tower; and, largest of all, $34 million for a new, six-bay aircraft hangar.

Those projects and others represent the biggest investment since the base was built during World War II.

“It’s a full-up, modern base,” said Richard Tetrev, the former second-in-command at BNAS and a leader of the community task force.

The base has changed dramatically in the seven years since he was the executive officer. His old office and the rest of the former quarterdeck are gone. Across the street, an empty lot marks the location of a four-story heating plant, replaced with a state-of-the-art natural gas and oil system. Some of the last remaining buildings from the World War II era have been demolished.

From 1991 to 1997, when Tetrev left, the Navy spent an average of $9.25 million each year at Brunswick Naval Air Station on maintenance and new construction. In the following seven years, from 1998 to 2004, average spending more than doubled to $19.6 million each year.

Isolate the last four years, and the number climbs to $37.5 million per year.

The calculations are part of a report Tetrev plans to release in the next few weeks, detailing the base’s strengths.

Like Rich, Tetrev downplays any suggestions that all this money will matter to Pentagon decision-makers.

“I don’t talk about it in a whole lot of detail,” said Tetrev, who has been briefing local leaders on the base-closure process.

After all, like the old line about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, the military has a history of investing in doomed bases.

“There are some horrible examples,” said Rich.

His former base in Bermuda had just begun construction of a multi-million-dollar hangar when it was listed for closure. The workers went right on with their work, though a Navy aircraft would never spend a night there.

Tetrev cites a closer example: the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone.

Maine’s lost base

Loring underwent massive changes in the 1980s.

A Strategic Air Command bomber base, it grew as the Cold War reached its height. The Air Force modernized the entire base.

Sen. Olympia Snowe toured the base in 1979 while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Along with Maine’s senators at the time, William Cohen and Edmund Muskie, she discovered a complex that was run down with neglect and age.

“It was so dilapidated,” Snowe said. “We thought, if we don’t make the improvements, then its closure is certain.”

Over the next decade, $300 million was spent on upgrades. The last came in January 1991, when the Air Force opened a new, $25 million hospital. On a per-bed cost, it was the most expensive hospital in Maine up to that time.

One month later, Loring was told to close.

“You have to understand, logic doesn’t apply to the military,” said attorney Severin Beliveau, who championed the base for years.

He and others argued that Loring’s proximity to Russia made it particularly valuable. They argued that so much money had been spent, too much to throw it away.

“We complained about it, but it carried very little weight,” Beliveau recalled. In the end, the Air Force decided that it had more bomber bases than it needed, he said. They decided other bases were more important.

“Ultimately, it was a combination of strategic military need and politics,” Beliveau said.

The base closed on Sept. 30, 1994. Three years later, the complex was taken over by the Loring Development Authority, which oversees the re-use of the facility, including the former hospital.

Now, it’s an accounting office that works on federal payrolls. Some of the high-priced buildings remain empty.

Beliveau believes the military decision-makers never really considered whether the base needed all that construction. They just accepted whatever money came their way and spent it.

“I think the culture is so deep,” Beliveau said. “You can never satisfy them. They want more and more and more.”

Pentagon budgeting

The discussions continue as Congress considers the 2005 budget.

The Bush Administration has asked for $420.7 billion for defense in the coming year. Of that, more than $5 billion would go to military construction.

Invariably, a portion of that will be spent at the 100-plus bases to be listed for closure next year. It could be as high as $1 billion, said Christopher Hellman, a military policy analyst for Washington’s Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

But to the Pentagon, the lost money means little more than the coins that spill out of people’s pockets, Hellman said.

He calls it “couch change.”

The Defense Department simply isn’t worried about the problem, which could affect about 1 percent of its budget. Part of the problem is that a solution is so difficult to find. Hellman’s group tried to do an analysis, but failed.

“You really couldn’t find any trends or patterns,” he said.

Members of Congress have suggested creating a list of bases that would be immune from closure, a kind of “untouchables” base list that would include such military stalwarts as Norfolk Naval Station and Andrews Air Force Base.

The aim was to make sure construction money would go only to bases that would remain open. But those bids failed, in part because it would create two political lists instead of only one.

Preventing spending at bases that might close would also force the military to become more flexible in its budgeting.

Projects can take as long as 10 years. And once Congress approves and appropriates the money, bases have five years to spend it.

“The (Pentagon) can’t plan for a base to close 10 years from now,” Hellman said.

Inconceivable’

Just because Congress makes the money available, it’s not always spent. Tetrev knows.

In 1988, 1991, 1993 and again in 1995, Brunswick Naval Air Station survived base closure rounds. Before the last one, leaders spent only as much as they needed to keep the place from falling apart, Tetrev said.

“You can’t stop doing maintenance,” he said. The five-year-window will give decision-makers at some bases enough flexibility to halt even the funded projects.

Yet, some leaders worry that holding off on such spending could make the problem worse.

“It’s a catch-22,” said Snowe.

Holding off on spending could weaken a base, hurting its chances of being chosen to stay open, the senator said. Yet, spending on a base like Brunswick could be seen as wasteful if officials decide it needs to be closed.

But Snowe is hopeful that all of that money will matter.

“It is absolutely inconceivable that they would ignore this kind of investment,” she said.

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