The Hawaii Army National Guard ceremoniously broke ground Thursday on a more than $100 million readiness center for the 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team at Kalaeloa.
When finished, the 55,199-square-foot center will provide 900 soldiers with the brigade’s headquarters, support battalion and special troops battalion classrooms, an assembly hall and auditorium and a modern kitchen, and consolidate functions now housed in the "rainbow" hangar and a separate building at the old Barbers Point Naval Air Station.
The first of the three phases will cost $30.4 million.
What happens with the federal budget, and particularly the threat of sequestration budget cuts, will determine whether the next two phases get funded in coming years.
U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono recently warned that possible budget cuts known as sequestration, set to take effect March 1 unless Congress takes action, could cut into defense contracts that average $2.3 billion a year in Hawaii.
"I think obviously everybody is following it (sequestration), and the concerns are serious, but at the same time there is so much indecision on how it’s actually going to shape out," said Chris Dawson, president of Dawson Technical LLC, a Native Hawaiian company and the prime contractor for the project.
Congress’ role in such projects in the past and present was noted by Gov. and former U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie in his remarks to about 250 people, more than half of them National Guard soldiers, who attended the ceremony.
"This (readiness center) is a result of work that the Armed Services committees did in the Congress back when it was possible to actually work together before the present circumstances seem to have evolved," Abercrombie said.
State adjutant Maj. Gen. Darryll D.M. Wong, head of the Hawaii National Guard, said the readiness center represents the first new building constructed on Oahu for the Army Guard since the completion of the regional training institute in Waimanalo in 2000.
The readiness center will be more than just a training site for citizen soldiers heading out on a federal mission, Wong said.
"It will also be a vital staging area in the event of a mobilization for a state mission," he said.
If a natural disaster strikes, the center would become a marshaling place "for our soldiers to be able to take care of the people and state of Hawaii," Wong said.
"These were facilities that were not designed to be (Army) brigade facilities. They were designed for the Navy," Hawaii National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Chuck Anthony said of the current facility. "They had been renovated somewhat but they were very old facilities."
Wong, too, said there is uncertainty with sequestration, "but I think with the re-balance to the Pacific, the focus on our readiness with having forces deployed forward rather than being in the mainland U.S., I think it would drive them (the Pentagon and Congress) to have these types of projects continue."
Anthony said the runway at Kalaeloa can accommodate C-17 cargo carriers, which will make the new readiness center even more relevant when there is the need for disaster relief.
The National Guard also plans to go out to bid this year on the first phase of a separate $100 million project for new hangars and other facilities to move the Army Guard’s 12 CH-47F Chinook helicopters to Kalaeloa from Wheeler Army Airfield, officials said. Officials said the Guard’s Black Hawk helicopters would remain at Wheeler.
