Cherry Point dedicates new FRC East facility

HAVELOCK — A poem-prayer by Navy Chaplain Carl P. Koch claimed “With $17.5 mil spent, the ribbon used for this event, should cut itself with the aid, of any golden scissor blade.”

Instead, North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, Rear Admiral Randolph Mahr of NAVAIRSYSCOM, and Navy Fleet Readiness Center-East Commanding Officer Col. L.S. Loch ceremoniously clipped the red ribbon opening the new Engineering Product Support Facility. The building will consolidate 200 engineers and logisticians previously spread out over several locations across Cherry Point and Havelock. Cherry Point Commander Col. Phillip Zimmerman and N.C. Sec. of Commerce Keith Crisco attended the ribbon cutting and official opening.

Ground was broken in June 2009 on the 35,736-square-foot building, which fronts Havelock’s Fontana Boulevard. Staff began working there over a month ago on engineering support for aircraft including the V-22, AV-8, C-130 H-1, H-46, H-53 and H-60. It includes about 5,000 square feet of high-bay area to allow aircraft to be near engineering design when needed.

“We’re here to open a building and to extend a partnership,” Mahr said. A planned building next door will accommodate more of the engineering work of the more than 450 engineers working at FRC-east.

Civilians working at FRC-East are in the largest civilian workplace east of I-95; and in her keynote address for the event, Perdue stressed the significance of those jobs to a state just receiving note as one of the nation’s top-three job producing states in the country.

“This facility is right for America,” Perdue said. “A second facility is equally right.”

Perdue said she was most impressed with the new building being the first LED-certified building at Cherry Point with energy saving design and with solar panels that produce 25 percent of its energy needs.

“The military understands that green is good,” she said in her remarks and stressed in a tour that followed.

Crisco said the new building “is an important step for Cherry Point and a critical part of the nation’s defense capability.”

Equipment already installed in the new building include a Cass Station to test weapons and write codes for aircraft software systems and will also include equipment worth more than $19 million, Erick Lewis of FRC-East said.

The facility was designed and constructed by The Haskell Company of Jacksonville, Fla., and Perdue said in her remarks that the company and the Navy were true to their word about using many eastern North Carolina subcontractors and workers.