A lot has changed at Reese. A lot remains the same.

Pilots who once labored in the classrooms and in the skies of West Texas have been replaced by thousands of South Plains College students as well as Texas Tech researchers.

Buildings once housing military operations have been taken over by a spattering of small businesses and other warehousing operations.

Joe Don Buckner / Staff Reese Technology Center front entrance today of the former air force base.

And what was once viewed as a major blow to the Lubbock economy is today a self-sustaining entity that's making some money, paying some bills and making big plans.

"There were a lot of issues when we took over this base and a lot of them involved the federal government. When we got those solved, we were able to kick Reese off on the right foot," said Delbert McDougal, CEO of McDougal Cos. and former chairman of the Lubbock Reese Redevelopment Authority - the

governing arm of the Reese Technology Center.

"Reese is a major $30 million asset," he said. "But it can be a lot stronger than it is today."

But it wasn't even that 10 years ago.

A-J File Photo Reese Air Force Base entrance prior to decommissioning in 1997.

"As Air Force bases go, (Reese is) a small one. What I found difficult was the whole (closing) process. This base has had its own set of opportunities and complications from the start," he said.

McBride, who arrived 15 months before the base was scheduled to close in September 1997, said it became clear to him early on that it was going to be a "multiplanning event" that brought with it more twists and turns than he could count.

McBride said Reese, from the outset, was never about the Air Force just turning over the keys and walking away.

Government, he and others say, became an obstacle at every turn.

"I'll never forget. He picked up the book, closed it and said, 'Don't tell us what we can't do. Help us to accomplish what we can do," ' McBride said. "But the problem from the beginning was there was no checklist to go down because every base is different, which made the process even more difficult."

McBride said Reese had one thing going for it: McDougal, who moved fast and who McBride called a riverboat gambler, and Tom Nichols, former president of then-Norwest Bank (now Wells Fargo) who had a methodical and analytic approach to everything.

He said the two set a balance that would enable Reese to walk for itself.

"When you have that kind of business expertise on your board, it really helps the entire process," he said.

LRRA Chairman John Tye, who has been on the board since it was formed, said Reese has come a long way since the government made the decision to close the base.

The good news, he said, is the state subdivision now holds the title to the land and has just one more small obstacle in its way when the government returns in November to examine Reese Technology Center's books to ascertain where all of its dollars, including public ones given to support the base transition, have been going.

Tye said the final audit will show that LRRA has pumped every penny it has back into the base.

"We've reinvested every dollar and we'll continue to do so," he said.

Today, the LRRA deals with projects it hopes can transform the base beyond its reputation as an education/research campus.

LRRA, the Lubbock Economic Development Alliance and other partners are looking at the possibility of establishing a transload terminal that could translate into big dollars and big business along the Reese Technology Center's vacant concrete runways.

But little, if anything, is being said about the Reese Transload Terminal - a container yard that would primarily serve the cotton industry.

Warren Warner, managing director, Foreign Trade Zone, for LEDA, said a Horizon Services study suggested the plan was "economically feasible."

"The next step now is to find out if the market and (other) customers are really there. If everything goes the way it looks, this could be a magnificent project," he said.

Eric Williams, the Reese Technology Center's executive director, said the facility would be designed to handle as many as 45,000 rail containers for the cotton industry as well as other local and regional manufacturers.

He said the terminal could generate as much as $60 million in annual revenue.

"It could make us a lot of money because we would get a percentage of the net revenue, which we would pour back into Reese to build new structures," he said.

Reese also is negotiating the construction of a a 50,000-square-foot underground data center that could be leased in suites to corporations interested in storing critical information during major outages.

But while much has changed at Reese, much appears frozen in time.

For example, dozens of buildings, including run-down dormitories and other antiquated facilities left behind by the Air Force, sit vacant in disrepair - 33 in all, that must be torn down.

Williams said that will occur only when money becomes available and/or clients show an interest in building new structures.

While Reese's usable buildings are 87 percent leased, the bulk of them are being leased by South Plains College and Texas Tech.

Tech has a major research presence with its Institute of Environmental & Human Health, Wind Science & Engineering Research Center, Vehicle Engineering and High Performance Computer Center.

When Reese closed, so went with it 1,238 civilian jobs. Today, Williams said the Reese Technology Center has restored 720 - most high-paying - with an estimated annual economic impact of $27 million.

Reese has had modest success in attracting businesses to the 2,500-acre site.

Earlier this year, Gene Messer Auto Group - a unit of Houston-based Group 1 Automotive - established a regional accounting/human resource operation that brought 35 jobs.

It also attracted South Plains Concrete, a unit of Waxhachie-based J&G Concrete, which built a $5.2 million plant near FM 114 to manufacture concrete pipe used in roadway construction. It's expected to create 38 jobs.

"We've had the same focus since day one - economic development and job creation. We're now the fifth-largest research park in the U.S. which is debt-free and self-supporting," Williams said.

He said from his perspective, only Kelly AFB in San Antonio and Lowry AFB in suburban Denver have had more success then Reese.

But he said Kelly, now called KellyUSA - still has some military function, while Lowry was converted into a home for the University of Colorado's Health Sciences Center.

"We didn't have that luxury when this base closed," Williams said. "We set a master plan in place and have a vision of where we want to go. We're not there yet, but we're making progress."

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