The Maine Army National Guard is building a new $15.5 million regional readiness facility in Presque Isle to replace an older station in Caribou.
Construction on the new Northern Maine Readiness Center is expected to begin in 2018 on a 10-acre site provided by the Presque Isle Industrial Council near Northern Maine Community College, according to Brig. Gen. Douglas Farnham, who is adjutant general for the Maine National Guard.
The project is expected to be finished in the summer of 2020 at a cost of $15.5 million. WBRC Architects and Engineers of Bangor have begun surveying and design work, Farnham said in a press release issued June 15, 2016.
The new space will have about 43,000 square feet and a high-efficiency energy system, he added.
The new center will replace the “aging” Solomon Readiness Center in Caribou, where the 185th Engineer Support Company is based, Farnham said.
The project was “accelerated by approval from Congress to address major facility systems concerns at the current location in Caribou,” the Guard said in the news release.
“The Caribou facility is reaching its useable life expectancy,” Col. Dwaine E. Drummond, the Guard’s director of facilities and engineering, said. “Costs to repair and improve the facility to ensure the safety of our soldiers are cost prohibitive for the Guard.”
“The presence of their operation will be a big thing in Presque Isle,” said Larry Clark, executive director of the Presque Isle Industrial Council, the economic development arm of the city that oversaw the deal with the Guard. The location of the new building harkens back to the area’s former use as a military airport between 1940 and 1961.
The Guard’s 120-person 185th Engineer Support Company is currently split between Caribou and a Houlton location. The unit will be growing to about 150 members by the time the new Presque Isle building is complete, with about 60 positions remaining in Houlton and about 90 in Presque Isle, according to Maj. Norman Stickney, spokesman for the Maine National Guard.
Over the last three years, the Guard also constructed a new $14.5 million Army Aviation Readiness Center in Bangor. A ceremony marking the opening of that facility was held in December 2015.
A readiness center for southern Maine in Saco also is set to be built in the coming years.
