How Outlying Field 8 swap will work

  • October 13, 2014
  • /   Carlton Proctor
  • /   economy
Navy Federal Credit Union's newest $200 million Phase 1 expansion is well under way, and as impressive and economically important as it is, there is potentially an even bigger project waiting in the wings. Next door to Navy Federal's 302 acre campus in the Beulah community is a 640-acre grassy field known as Outlying Landing Field 8. It serves as Whiting Field Naval Air Station's helicopter training facility. Local business leaders want to acquire the site and develop a world-class commerce park that would complement Navy Federal's proposed $1 billion campus it expects to have in place by the year 2020. Led by contractor Jim Cronley and and retired four-star Adm. Robert Kelly, the plan is to develop a 640 acre site in Santa Rosa County, now owned by Escambia County, into a helicopter training field nearly identical to OLF 8. Once the Santa Rosa site development is complete, Escambia County would swap the Santa Rosa site for OLF 8. The complex deal has many moving parts and challenges, but Scott Luth, CEO of the Pensacola Community Economic Development Association, said the proposed commerce park could become a huge economic engine, generating thousands of high-skill, high-wage jobs over the next decade. The idea has caught on among local business leaders, and Escambia County moved all-in late last year when it bought the Santa Rosa site from a large Birmingham, Ala.-based timber management company. The site is only a few miles from Whiting Field, as opposed to the 30-mile distance from Whiting to OLF 8. Long a champion of the OLF 8 project, Cronley said one of the biggest hurdles to moving it forward has been cleared. "All of the surface rights issues to the Santa Rosa property have been resolved," he said. "We've also done a lot of the preliminary design and engineering work on the Santa Rosa site over the past several months." The land swap has cleared several rungs of the Navy's hierarchy and now rests in the hands of Navy lawyers in Washington, D.C. "What we have to do next is get the lawyers to approve the legal aspects of the deal and then tell the Navy brass they can proceed with drawing up a contract spelling out what we are required to do to develop the Santa Rosa site into an operational helicopter landing field," Cronley said. Ultimately, the deal must receive congressional approval, said Cronley. Both U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson have been briefed on the project. "At this point, I think we're right on schedule," Cronley said. If all goes well, he believes the swap can be accomplished within two or three years. "We keep running into things that we have to work around," Cronley said. "But this project is so important to the Navy, and so important to this community, we're going to figure out a way to get it all done."  
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