Cobb Chamber working to save Dobbins air base – Atlanta Business Chronicle

Metro Atlanta lost three of its four military bases in the Pentagon’s last round of base closings in 2005.

Nine years later, deep spending cuts proposed by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and a potential restructuring of the Air Force have business leaders in Cobb County worried about losing Dobbins Air Reserve Base, the only military base left in the region.

A committee of executives formed by the Cobb Chamber of Commerce is putting together a campaign to educate military officials and Georgia’s congressional delegation on Dobbins’ importance both to the military and the local economy.

“It’s a huge economic engine,” said David Connell, president and CEO of the Cobb Chamber. “If it closed down, it would take a long, long time to recover.”

After escaping unscathed from earlier rounds of cost-cutting base closures during the 1980s and 1990s, metro Atlanta lost the Army’s Fort McPherson and Fort Gillem in 2005, as well as Naval Air Station Atlanta, located adjacent to Dobbins in Marietta.

While there haven’t been additional base closings since then, Hagel announced Feb. 24 that he would ask Congress in 2017 to identify a new list of bases for closure.

“The reality of reduced resources and a challenging and changing strategic environment requires us to prioritize and make difficult choices,” Hagel said during a Pentagon news conference. “We cannot fully achieve our goals for overhead reductions without cutting unnecessary and costly infrastructure.”

via Cobb Chamber working to save Dobbins air base – Atlanta Business Chronicle.