Naval Station Ingleside offers dead?

Sources at the Port say that currently all of the previous offers except Swiftships/APEX Group of Companies have failed to produce and A&M refuses to present that offer to the commissioners. Promises by Service Marine LLC, a company that proposed using the facility for a deep water drilling support operation and a tourism submarine builder have disappeared and a Mag-Lev train building Indian tribe failed to follow through on local meetings including one between Chief Grey Wolf and County Judge Loyd Neal.

Naval Station Ingleside has been under the control of A&M University System in a development deal that began in April of 2009 and goes at least through January 31, 2011 without landing a real offer. The Swiftships/Apex offer which would by or lease the base and provide upwards of over 1,000 high paying skilled trade jobs over the first two years has been repeatedly denied the opportunity to present their offer to the Port Commissioners by A&M’s Dennis Beal and Port NSI Director Tom Moore.

Moore previously said the $2 million dollar down payment and offer to take over the $3-5 million a year maintenance cost was too little. The primary stumbling block seems to be that Swiftships/APEX wants to develop the whole base, something that A&M seems to be jealously guarding for its own aspirations. Most of the projects that A&M has proposed relate directly to its own operations or partnerships it is in such as the Wind Alliance (see A&M wants NSI and wants to be paid to take it.)

The A&M contract was questioned earlier this year by Commissioners Ken Berry, Francis Gandy and Bobby Gonzalez for stonewalling attempts by Swiftships to get a full hearing and present an offer. A&M has repeatedly produced mysterious bidders at the crucial time only to have them dissipate into thin air when vetted. Other proposals by A&M are mostly from subsidiaries of their own organization such as the Fire Training School. That group proposed operating a training school at the base in exchange for operating a part time fire station with no rent being paid.

Swiftships/APEX Group of Companies is a Louisiana boat builder that constructs fast patrol boats up to 235 feet in length and trains operation and maintenance crews for the US and foreign countries. With millions of dollars of contracts in the pipeline they are running out of room at their Morgan City, La. facility, they identified NSI as the perfect facility to expand their operations; they were also very high on the available skilled workforce. 18,000 people are unemployed in the Corpus Christi MSA.

On April 1 their CEO sent a letter to the Port saying they were moving on to begin negotiations with other BRAC facilities in Virginia and Puerto Rico. WtP contacts with upper management staff indicated they preferred the NSI facility but as they stated in their letter to the Port, to negotiate they “needed a serious partner.” The company and local business people working with the company have repeatedly stated they have been stonewalled by A&M’s Dennis Beal and the NSI Director Tom Moore.

During the last communication WtP had with company officials, it was stated, “We are still interested in NSI, in fact it is our preferred location, but we are all done trying to work with people where it seems we are not wanted. If they call us up and want to talk we are willing, but we are not going to persist without an invitation. We will start negotiations with other places and if they call us and we are not too far down the road with other negotiations, we will come back, otherwise it’s a business decision and we are under a timetable to build ships.”

Repeated calls and an email to Moore at the Port were not returned.