Posted on Thu, Nov. 12, 2009
In an abrupt reversal, Gov. Rendell today abandoned plans to convert the closing Willow Grove Naval Air Station into a state-administered emergency and defense hub.
Rendell wrote in a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that because the military has declined to assign a flying mission to the Pennsylvania Air National Guard's 111th Fighter Wing at the base, the state could not justify spending millions of dollars to configure the airfield as a state-federal facility.
"The continued and increasing expenditures of scarce state resources on this project made no sense," Rendell wrote to Gates, "as long as the federal government failed to commit to being a full partner in this effort."
The decision likely ends a fight that Rendell began after Willow Grove turned up on the Defense Department's list of recommended base closures in 2005. Rather than seeing the 1,100-acre base shut down, Rendell had proposed converting it into a nexus for the region's homeland security and other government needs, with outside agencies paying rent to the state to cover expenses.
Although the facility was expected to be fiscally self-sufficient eventually, the state estimated spending up to $19 million on capital improvements and first-year operating costs, a sum Rendell called "an undue fiscal burden" during lean times.
"The concept is unsustainable without a corresponding federal pledge to support the installation and undertake military flights there," Rendell said in a statement.
Department of Defense officials did not respond to calls today.
Although Rendell expressed hope that the base would house a proposed regional National Emergency Center, that prospect is uncertain. A U.S. House bill to create six such centers has not reached the committee level. Its only Pennsylvania cosponsor, U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach (R), did not return a call.
State officials said they expect the Willow Grove Naval Air Station to be turned over to a redevelopment committee to handle its conversion to partially civilian use.
The committee is largely locally controlled. Thus, area residents who previously worried that the state-federal installation - and especially the private-sector businesses housed on it - would create incessant plane traffic will probably be shaping the restrictions on airstrip use themselves, officials said.
"This gives us more protection to making sure it's not used as a civilian airport," State Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf (R., Montgomery) said.
About 110 acres of the base will continue to house Pennsylvania Air and Army National Guard units and a U.S. Army Reserves installation, though the regular military airstrip use will end when its last A-10 jet fighters depart next summer.
Contact staff writer Derrick Nunnally at 610-313-8212 or dnunnally@phillynews.com.
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