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Wright-Pat to make room for more posts
Sunday, January 28, 2007
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE — Base officials are getting ready to start an ambitious construction program to house incoming aerospace medicine and other research programs.
Planning and design videoconferences for the construction at Wright-Patterson are already under way. Initial bids are to be advertised in April or May. Congress could appropriate construction money by October, which would clear the way for work to start.
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It is the result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process that mandated the closing of 25 major installations and the reconfiguring of 24 others nationwide during the next five years. Programs are to be relocated or combined in an effort to make the military more efficient and cut costs.
The BRAC outcome means a net gain of 1,120 jobs for Wright-Patterson with a heavy emphasis on aerospace medicine research and education. It also will require consolidation on the Air Force base of research in sensors used for air and space reconnaissance, surveillance and warfare.
The influx of jobs between 2008 and 2011 represents the Dayton region's brightest economic opportunity for years to come as the positions of physicians, engineers and other researchers arrive here from other states.
"They're the plum kind of jobs that any community would want," said Michael Gessel, the Dayton Development Coalition's vice president for federal government programs.
