New Dynetics HQs marks 30 years at Cummings

Building combines 80 percent of firm's local work force

Dynetics, the first company to move into the western section of Cummings Research Park more than 30 years ago, has opened a new 160,000-square-foot corporate headquarters on Explorer Boulevard.

"This is a big event in our corporate history," Marc Bendickson, chief executive officer of the company, said at the opening ceremonies and ribbon cutting for the new building on Friday. The company's 700 employees in Huntsville had been spread out over seven different office locations, and the new facility will make cooperation and collaboration on programs easier, he said.

The new building has 21 conference rooms, an expanded library, computer labs and classified work areas, and about 400 scientists, engineers and business enterprise support personnel will work there. About 80 percent of the company's Huntsville work force will now be consolidated at Dynetics' three-building campus, which has about 277,000 square feet of space in all.

Dynetics provides engineering research and development services to government and commercial customers. It has more than 900 employees nationwide.

It took "more than a village" to make the company's expansion happen, said Tom Baumbach, Dynetics' president. Besides a visionary CEO, "a world-class" building contractor, bankers, accountants and lawyers, "it took some good old-fashioned luck," Baumbach said.

Dynetics was founded in Huntsville in 1974 by Herschel Matheny and Dr. Stephen Gilbert, who were recognized at the grand opening event. Matheny was president until he retired in 1989, and Gilbert is a member of the company's senior technical staff.

"I can't say enough about that investment" in the research park, Huntsville Major Loretta Spencer said. "It was so critical at the time ... and put us on a new path."

The new building was designed by Larrell Hughes of L. Hughes Associates in Huntsville, and the general contractor was B.L. Harbert International of Birmingham.