It's been a pleasure knowing you, BAE. You were a good neighbor until the end. Your employees have been good to this area, with a lot of charitable work. You plowed your sidewalks in the winter (a big thing, around here.) But now the long goodbye that started September 8 is almost over.
This is what you looked like on September 12, four days after the flood and two days after Main Street, which you front, was plowed of most of the dirt that covered it and was reopened. At the beginning, your employees helped with the most stricken residential parts of Westover and we will always be grateful.
The 600,000 sq ft building, 3 blocks from my house and heavily damaged in our flood of September 8, is now declared unsalvageable and will be demolished. You may be interested in reading this link - even if you have no interest in what happens in upstate NY - because you, my U.S. readers, will be footing the bill for the demolition. (I guess I should be gracious and thank you in advance.)
Do I seem bitter or angry? Yes, a little. But, you know, I read somewhere once that anger can be a sign of hope. If you are angry at something, it means you have some control. With control there is hope. I've never been angry at the flood itself.
I only hope this is for the best. Without the Air Force (owner of the building) assuming the cost, BAE would almost certainly have left our area instead of relocating to a different building, leaving almost 1300 people unemployed.
And at least the building won't lie vacant for the next 30 or more years, like some former Endicott-Johnson factories have.
But still, I have to wonder....what will become of Westover? (there's a lot more damaged than BAE.) And will we, the residents of Westover, have any control over that?
Thanks for documenting this sad chronology. I spent my first eight years out of college working for GE in this building, from June 1979 to August 1987. I have lots of good memories of that period. Part way through that period, my wife finished her master's degree in computer science at SUNY Binghamton, and joined me at GE. She worked on flight control software for the F-18 and B-2 aircraft. We lived at Indian Ridge apartments up the hill north of the mall the first year, and then the next three years in a top floor apartment at 23 Lewis Street in Johnson City.
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