On August 25,
2005, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission voted
unanimously to end Galena's mission as a Forward Operating
Location, and cease the Air Force presence in Galena. The vote marks the beginning of the end of
a relationship between the Air Force and Galena, going back to the
early days of World War II and intensifying during the Cold War.
By April 2006, the Air Force announced that the mission previously served by
Galena had already been reassigned to Eielson Air Force Base in
Fairbanks.
The pullout deadline for the Air Force is October 1, 2008. The
Air Force presence in Galena
will scale down from now until then, involving layoffs among
employees of the base contractor, Chugach Support Services, and the
demolition of buildings that no one claims for potential reuse.
A local committee formed
in October 2005 (the Galena Economic Development Committee) is
charged with guiding the process of receiving and reusing Air
Force facilities. Since the Air Force never owned the land it
occupied (it belongs to the State of Alaska), the process has
considerable legal and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, including
dozens of different leases for the various parcels on the base, put
in place over a period of many years.
The Galena Economic Development Committee (GEDC), State of
Alaska, and Air Force have committed to meeting every three months
during the shutdown period. The first of these "tri-party" meetings
occurred in July of 2006.
The GEDC contracted with the firm USKH and various
subcontractors to write a
comprehensive reuse plan for the base. The final version of the plan
was published in May 2007 (see links to the right to access the
document and related material). The expansion of the Galena Interior Learning
Academy boarding school is the center piece of that plan.
To that end, the Air Force transferred two major buildings on
base to local control on June 1, 2007: the Ptarmigan Hall dormitory,
and the Two Seasons Dining Hall. The City of Galena / Galena
City School District now own and operate these buildings, and they
will serve the students at GILA beginning in the fall of 2007.
To read the Commission's September 8 final report language about Galena,
summarizing its findings and recommendations, click here
The newest Base Redevelopment and Realignment Manual is a
146-page guidebook for the military to use when implementing a
closure or downsizing. It comes from the Deputy Undersecretary of
Defense for Installations and Environment at the Pentagon.
Access it
here.
For
a more detailed summary of Galena's involvement in the 2005 BRAC process, click
here
For
more information on the BRAC site visit to Galena on July 29,
2005, click
here
