Westar marks opening by announcing addition
New building in Cummings Park to get $13M annex

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

By MARIAN ACCARDI
Times Business Writer accardi@htimes.com

As Westar Aerospace & Defense Group Inc. celebrated the opening of an 84,000-square-foot building in Cummings Research Park West, company leaders also announced a second, even larger facility will be built next door.

The new two-story building at 890 Explorer Blvd. will accommodate about 400 employees in Huntsville.

A $13 million, 126,000-square-foot extension will be built adjacent to the property, said Rob Topping, president and chief executive officer of St. Louis, Mo.-based Westar Aerospace & Defense Group.

The three-story building is expected to be completed by the end of 2007.

"Needless to say, we're very happy to be on Explorer Boulevard," Topping said Monday afternoon.

'Vision and dream'

The new building is "a vision and dream we had many years ago," said Garrett Martz, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Westar, a systems engineering contractor. "We're extremely pleased and happy to be here in Cummings Research Park."

"Our business is growing so quickly," said Topping, adding that the planned building will help accommodate the company's growing work force in North Alabama.

The thousands of defense-related jobs that will move to Redstone Arsenal because of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process "helped us have confidence in the decision" to expand, Topping said, and a floor was added to the planned building to accommodate expectations for "BRAC-driven growth."

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile; U.S. Reps. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, Terry Everett, R-Rehobeth, and Mike Rogers, R-Anniston; and Huntsville Mayor Loretta Spencer spoke at the ceremony. Westar's first employee in Huntsville, Bill Wahlheim, now the company's vice president of community relations, broke a champagne bottle on the side of the building.

1,100 employees

Westar Aerospace & Defense Group has more than 1,100 employees worldwide who provide engineering, software and logistics services to the Department of Defense and allied governments. Westar is a wholly owned subsidiary of U.K.-based QinetiQ, an international defense and security technology company.

Westar's campus was designed by Fuqua and Partners. The developer is Samples Properties.