HILL AIR FORCE BASE -- With the thrust of a golden shovel, the largest enhanced-use lease project in the history of the Air Force officially kicked off Wednesday morning.
A ground-breaking ceremony on the Falcon Hill project's first building, owned by Northrop Grumman, was held at Hill Air Force Base, featuring Republican Gov. Gary Herbert, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, Maj. Gen. Andrew Busch, and others as guest speakers.
The Falcon Hill project encompasses 550 acres on the base and is a $1.5 billion public-private venture of the state, Hill and Woodbury Corporation.
Terms of the partnership call for Sunset Ridge Development Partners LLC to finance, build and maintain 8 million square feet of office space and supporting restaurants and hotels on 550 acres on Hill's west side.
Sunset will own the 550 acres over a 50-year lease and, as a payment in kind, will build 1.6 million square feet of office space on the base, which will allow employees to move out of a series of old World War II era storage facilities that have been converted into office space for base employees.
When the 50-year lease is up, the Air Force will own all of the property, including the hotels and restaurants.
Military and political officials involved with the project say it will create and estimated 15,000 jobs over the life of the lease.
"Right now, we're only scratching the surface of what this can become in the next generation," said Utah Gov. Gary Herbert. "It's so important to have these opportunities for economic expansion."
Busch, commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill, said after a two year delay in construction, the project was helped along by Utah's Congressional Delegation.
"In the last year, Senator Hatch has been very active in putting together the various stakeholders that sometimes have had very different opinions on what we could do with this project," Busch said.
At the ceremony, Hatch also addressed the delay.
"Why the two year wait?" Hatch said. "The simple answer is this is the biggest enhanced-use project in the history of the Air Force and the laws that permit this type of development are relatively new."
Hatch also said part of the delay was moving the Northrop building closer to Hill's 526th Intercontinental Ballistic Missile unit and whether some minor costs associated with the move would require some additional budget authority.
"Moving Northrop Grumman's ICBM office to be within walking distance of Hill's ICBM Group was thought to be an important contribution to the Air Force's reinvigoration of its nuclear mission," he said.
Officials say the new building will take approximately 15 months to complete.
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