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PLATTSBURGH—The opening of a multi-million dollar aeronautical maintenance company at the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base will be "transformational" to the region's economy.

That was the prediction of Garry Douglas, president of the Plattsburgh North Country Chamber of Commerce.

"If a region is fortunate, once in a generation it has something that comes along that is transformational to its economy," Douglas said.

On Monday, Douglas welcomed Gov. George Pataki in Plattsburgh to announce that Laurentian Aerospace Corp. plans to build a 262,000-square-foot, two-bay hanger complex at a cost of $64 million, on the ramp at the airport.

The facility is expected to employ 700 people in high-paying jobs during the next five years.

Laurentian is a newly created company that will provide aircraft service to commercial airlines, air cargo and military wide body jets such as Boeing 747s and Airbus A300s, according to the company' s Chief Executive Officer Paul Gobeil.

While there is plenty of competition for narrow body jet maintenance, there are very few companies in the wide body business, Gobeil said.

Laurentian will be performing "C checks" which are routine maintenance checks that occur every 15 months and "D checks" which occur every four years. The cost of these checks can run from $500,000 to almost $2 million, depending on what types of issues arise during the checks.

"These are expensive, so you don't need to do many to be successful," said Gobeil.

Although presently many airlines service their own planes, Gobeil said that in an effort to save money, many companies plan to be out sourcing this service. Most existing maintenance facilities are outdated and have to annually dock planes, a process that adds a whole day of downtime when a plane goes in or out of the maintenance bay.

A new state-of-the-art laser docking system will help Laurentian eliminate this problem.

The system is expected to cut the service time in half, thus saving airlines a half million dollars per plane.

Already Gobeil has several letters of interest from airlines that plan to be customers of Laurentian, once the operation is up and running. Gobeil expects his customers to come from the United States, Canada, Europe and possibly Asia. Plattsburgh is also perfectly positioned on the transatlantic flight line between the United States and Europe, Gobeil said.

With the number of orders for large aircraft increasing each year, Gobeil sees the company expanding to more than its original two bays. Space is not a problem with the Plattsburgh site and the Clinton County Legislature has promised Laurentian that the space they need will be reserved for them.

Also the size and length of Plattsburgh's runway will have no problem landing the large planes and was a major factor in attracting Laurentian to the area.

"We haven' t seen anything like this space in the US and Canada," Gobeil said. "There is plenty of room for future expansion." The "father of the Plattsburgh Air Force Base," Clyde Lewis was also present for the announcement.

"This runway here is the best one in the whole northeast," Lewis said. "This area is the future of aviation." Douglas told Lewis, "What you built here 50 years ago is about to have anew life."

Douglas predicts that Plattsburgh will become an aviation center, with a cluster of supporting aviation companies coming to the area to work with Laurentian. In fact, the day after the announcement Douglas planned to give a site tour to a company that had already called and was interested.

"Just like Bombardier, this company will draw in a cluster of supporting companies around it," Douglas said.

"I see Plattsburgh emerging as a center of excellence in aero-space," said Gobeil.

For many, the announcement was the end of a long road toward fully redeveloping the base since its closure.

"We're gonna fly now," Douglas said. "This is a culmination of what weve been working toward since the base closure in '95."