Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Naval Expansion Promotes Middletown/Newport Economy

Newport Naval Base (read this as Newport & Middletown) have benefitted from the recent BRAC re-alignments. "The Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport is growing by about 100 civilian engineers, who are working on projects reassigned from other bases that include radio communications, submarine antennae and towed-array sonar, according to John Riendeau, sector lead for the defense industry at the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp."
The OCS school also relocated here from Pensacola along with the Supply Corps School From Georgia in 2011.

This in turn has brought four companies here: Adaptive Methods Inc. (Middletown), AEgisTechnologies Group, Alaska Native Technologies LLC (Middletown), and Paramount Solutions Inc (Middletown). Most are at the Coporate Center here in Middletown wherein the Economic Advisory Committee has been helping secure funding (local & federal) for improvements. Sen. Reed & Rep. Kennedy have been most helpful here. Our Chair is Bob Silva & NCCC with Keith Stokes have also been instrumental in this regard. The Mayforth Group is also assisting with improvements/funding and of late the State has also contributed. And all of this would be impossible without Ron Wolanski, the Town Planner who performs the day-to-day grunt work.

Adaptive has three engineers in Middletown with plans to hire four more engineers in 2008. AEgis Technologies (coming to Newport/Middletown) started its one-man operation in July. It is hiring two more tech workers now & plans to expand to 25-30 workers over the next 3 yrs.

"...Rhode Island offers access to potential biotech, transportation, academic, and homeland security industry clients," says Aegis' Stephen Swenson.

This info comes from American City Business Journals Inc. Mass High Tech" The Journal of New England Technology by Brendan Lynch. The link is in the title.

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