Meeting between Galena and Air Force officials discusses gray areas in the Galena Air Force Base reuse plan

7-27-07
Tim Bodony (KIYU)

Air Force officials charged with finishing the transfer of facilities on the Galena Air Force Base outlined their problems with the base’s reuse plan, at a meeting held at Galena City Hall this past Tuesday.  

At stake is potentially millions of dollars in transition funding, which the City of Galena will need over the next few years before the City’s operations on base can be self-sustaining. 

The Air Force Real Property Agency will soon be taking over as the main section of the Air Force that handles the transfer of land and buildings on the Galena Air Force Base.   

The transfer process is supposed to be guided by a reuse plan, written by the community or a special committee that receives and transfers the property.  

Galena’s reuse plan, finished in May of this year, lays out two possible reuse strategies that could be followed, referred to as the “Minimum Development Scenario”, and the “Maximum Development Scenario”. 

The minimum development plan focuses entirely on the growth of the boarding school, and assumes no other tenants will move into former Air Force facilities.   

The reuse plan endorses the more optimistic Maximum Development Scenario – in which GILA is still the largest user of base facilities, but other groups are expected to have a presence on base.    

That includes private sector developers, who would lease buildings from the City, fix them up, and manage them.   

The uncertainty and potential collapse of that element of the reuse plan was of particular concern to Dale Vandagriff, the Galena Project Manager with the Air Force Real Property Agency.  

Vandagriff criticized the City’s reuse plan as being too vague and incomplete, lacking a fact-based argument to show how the maximum reuse scenario could be achieved. 

Vandagriff: From the Air Force's perspective, we are running out of time. The flag has to come down on this base on 30 September  2008.  As I look at the plan today, I personally find it hard to find the level of support that you are asking for the maximum reuse...the private sector section of option two...I don't see the support in the plan. I just don't see it. So it begs the question - at what point can the City Council come back to the Air Force with a decision on the options within the reuse, and have a meeting of the minds of what is supportable and what is not. Our criteria is that it has to be a reuse that has viability and the ability to sustain itself, with Air Force assistance for a period of time. But as I look there and see all those buildings that are in there potentially for private use, I don't see the support, the documentation within the plan that says that will happen.

Later in the meeting, Vandagriff further criticized the fuzzy role given to private sector development in the plan, asserting that the Air Force cannot make open-ended financial commitments.  

Vandagriff: My fear is that we would maintain [buildings] in a warm storage status and pay those bills, which would be fine if [they] had an intended use.  And then at the end of that period of time, if no one stepped up to use it you could say to us, or to the State, 'we don't want these buildings.' And we would be in the position having to consider taking them down, demolishing them [or] taking them away. That's not a position that I want to see the Air Force, or the City, in.

One building that is slated for private development status - and has a potential developer lined up - is the Iditarod Inn.  Yukaana Development Corporation, the for-profit subsidiary of Louden Tribal Council, has made a formal request to lease the building.  The reuse plan states that the Iditarod Inn could serve as a training center with on-site housing, or as a hotel, with Yukaana assuming control of the building in October of 2010.   

Air Force officials agreed that the building has good potential for reuse, and they will likely pay to keep it in warm status until a developer is ready to take it over.   

But in response to Vandagriff’s claims that the Maximum Development Scenario is asking too much of the Air Force, City of Galena consultant Marvin Yoder tried to clarify what maximum development means.  The director of the now-extinct Galena Economic Development Committee said that the City was not trying to fleece the Air Force for all its worth.  

Yoder: The [Galena Economic Development] Committee's idea of maximum development was that we want to keep as many buildings as possible for future use.    The Committee was not saying that every building has to be brought up to 'brand new' standard with new carpets, new door hinges, new everything. That was never the goal. It was put in there as part of a benchmark.

Randy Barker, the 11^th Air Force Deputy Chief of Logistics, has been the Galena project manager at the in-state Air Force level since the beginning of the BRAC process in 2005. 

He agreed with Vandagriff that the reuse plan has some gray areas, which need to be filled in before he and Vandagriff report to their superiors, including the top Air Force official in charge of facilities, Assistant Secretary William Anderson. 

Barker:   We don't want to continue a long term Air Force liability either, where there is no community benefit in the end. That's why we have questioned some of [what is in the reuse plan] as we have put our analysis together. Are these really viable reuses, what's the plan to get there, and how that's all going to come together in the end.  Dale and I are the two responsible people who have to go back to Secretary Anderson and make those recommendations. We want to make sure we are giving him solid information.

One major point of agreement between the Air Force and Galena officials was that the Galena Interior Learning Academy, and education in general, should be the main purpose for the former Air Force base in the future.   

As he states in this exchange with Galena City Manager Walt Wilcox, Vandagriff looks at buildings that will serve education as being worthy of transition funding.  

Vandagriff: Today, what I see as supportable is the school. The school is the anchor. It's worthy of support, it deserves support. I would say that the buildings that the school is using, will use, and perhaps the Iditarod [Inn] and a couple of other options would be what I would personally be willing to support.

Wilcox: How about the large warehouse?

Vandagriff: Yes

Barker: That's one that we are very willing to support

Wilcox: I don't think we are that far off. I just think we need to get off the dime, come up with something that is an official action, give it to you, and go forward.

Vandagriff said that he wants to report to his superiors with a final plan for Galena within two months. 

The outgoing Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Fred Kuhn, stated in a November 2006 letter that the Air Force is willing to pay for operations and maintenance on vacant buildings, beyond the October 1, 2008 closure deadline.  The support is conditional on the buildings remaining vacant before the next user takes control, and the new purpose of a building must be realistic and economically viable in the eyes of the Air Force.   

The City is expected to take the Air Force up on their warm storage offer for at least 4 buildings on base, and when that happens, Vandagriff says that his agency will be in charge. 

Vandagriff: Once the degree and type of post-closure financial assistance that may be available to the community [has been determined], from that point forward, once some agreements have been reached, we would be in a position then to manage that, and provide some oversight on that.               

The economic analysis done for the base reuse effort indicates that Galena will need about 7 million dollars in outside assistance, spread out over the next four years, in order to pay for operations and maintenance.   

If the maximum development scenario is successful, according to the reuse plan, the base will break even in 2013.  Until then - not considering outside financial support - operations will produce an annual deficit, decreasing every year as the student population at GILA grows.