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State set to review bids for $27 million military center
By Kurt Erickson
kurt.erickson@lee.net
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SPRINGFIELD — More than two years after the project was unveiled, state officials are preparing to launch construction of a new military facility in Mount Vernon.

In December, the state will review the bids for an 83,000-square-foot Armed Forces Reserve Center that is expected to cost nearly $27 million.

The project is part of the Department of Defense’s controversial 2005 recommendation that several military bases throughout the state be closed and consolidated with other units.

Christopher Shireman, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Military Affairs, said the military complex will be on 23 acres west of Interstate 57 in Jefferson County.

“It’s a very large armory,” Shireman said.

Once completed in the spring of 2010, the facility will combine former reserve centers in Centralia and Fairfield with National Guard units in Mount Vernon and Salem.

In addition to the main building, the work also will include a 10,900-square-foot maintenance building and a separate parking lot for military vehicles.

The project is being funded out of the federal budget, not state coffers.

Meanwhile, plans remain on track to build a similar facility for military units at the Southern Illinois Airport between Carbondale and Murphysboro.

In its 2005 report, the Pentagon recommended that the Army Reserve Center in Marion be closed and the units be relocated to a new facility in Carbondale.

The new center, tentatively expected to cost $22 million, would be built on a 15-acre parcel at the airport. It would be smaller than the Mount Vernon project, but big enough to house the military units from Carbondale, Marion and Cairo, as well as large military airplanes and helicopters.

The Department of Military Affairs says construction of the Southern Illinois facility could get underway sometime after October 2008.

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