Cold War’s End Means Cold Town For Sale

Available immediately: One fully built town, complete with international runway, modern housing, schools and port. Needs residents.

Such is the appeal Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens sent out Friday for ideas on the future of Adak Naval Station, once a supersecret spot on the far-flung tip of the Aleutian Islands.

The facility was used as a staging area for monitoring Soviet submarine activity when there was a Soviet Union and a Cold War.

Now, with the Cold War over and the Soviet Union dismantled, the Adak installation is a useless artifact.

It was ordered closed by the Base Closure and Realignment Commission last year.

Stevens will convene a meeting Feb. 16 in Anchorage to find out if there is any life after death for the once-bustling city, which in its heyday rated as one of the larger towns in Alaska.

“Adak has approximately $2 billion worth of quality facilities on it,” Stevens said in a prepared statement.

“Many people, and I’m one of them, believe Adak is such a central location that we ought to look to it to become an international center of some kind.”

Among the ideas that have been floated are converting it into a fishing port or turning it into a prison.

“I believe it’s up to all of us to put our heads together and try to figure out how to get some value out of the taxpayers’ money,” Stevens said.

“The fishing industry, aviation people, those involved in trade, could all come together and work to expand the contribution Adak can make to our state’s economy.”

In an interview last week, Stevens said he instructed the Defense Department through a rider on a spending bill to keep all the buildings heated so they don’t deteriorate in the harsh environment.

“It would have been closed already except that I asked them to keep it warm for this period until we find out if we can use those buildings,” he said.

“If we shut them down, the buildings would be gone in a year.”

The meeting will be held at the Hotel Captain Cook.

The Navy will review what’s at the facility, the timetable for closing the operations and any environmental problems the Navy is leaving behind.

Stevens’ press aide, Mitch Rose, said a small military contingent is all that occupies the island now.