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Once reduced to a skeletal frame, a massive landmark visible from U.S. Highway 101 has been restored to its original form minus the toxic chemicals that made it too dangerous to inhabit for decades.
Spearheaded by Google’s Planetary Ventures, the historic restoration of Hangar One impressed local officials who gathered at Moffett Field in Mountain View on Friday morning to celebrate the completion of the long-anticipated project.
“Today, we are honoring Hangar One’s past as a naval airship facility while embracing its future as a hub for technology and innovation,” said Eugene Tu, director of NASA Ames Research Center. “Today, we don’t just reopen a building. We celebrate the revival of a legend.”
Built more than 90 years ago, Hangar One has long served as a visual beacon for the region. The mammoth steel structure covers eight acres on Moffett Field. It’s a remarkable feat of engineering that holds even today. The hangar is one of the largest free-standing structures in the world, according to Chris Alwan, district director of Planetary Ventures.
For years, however, it sat stripped of its roof, siding, windows and doors as part of a U.S. Navy remediation effort to clean up chemical toxins that were used in the original construction. Planetary Ventures took over after it signed a lease with NASA to operate Moffett Federal Airfield on the condition that it also would restore Hangar One.
Former U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, who attended the March 20 celebration, noted that the restoration was a massive undertaking not only for the scale of the work but also for the financial commitment.
“There were agencies that had responsibility except … frankly none of them wanted to accept the responsibility,” Eshoo said, her voice echoing in the cavernous hangar. “Because with that responsibility came money out of their budgets, and it was a huge sum of money.”
Alwan declined to share how much it cost to restore the hangar, or what the plans were for the structure.
“We’re still working on it,” he said. “But we’re committed to innovation.”
Eshoo, a staunch advocate of the Hangar One restoration, touted the private-public partnership, describing it as a model for future collaborations.
“We don’t always realize that we can make history ourselves,” she told this publication. “Today is the culmination of that.”
Hangar One’s restoration was completed in December and included the recladding of the siding and roof as well as upgrades, like new plumbing and a ventilation system, according to Scott Foster, vice president and head of Google’s real estate and workplace services.
“With buildings of this age, you’re always trying to preserve the history while also meeting modern-day requirements,” he said. “We tried to do it as close to the original design and construction as possible.”
To remove the toxic chemicals, Planetary Ventures surrounded the hangar with scaffolding and worked section by section, cleaning about 1.8 million square feet of steel elements. The steel frame was then primed and repainted while siding, doors and windows were later added.
Last month, Planetary Ventures received certification from the federal Environmental Protection Agency confirming that it was fully remediated, Foster said.
History of Hangar One
While the celebration was held for local dignitaries, a big part of the restoration effort also stemmed from the community, including those who worked at Hangar One when it was a naval air station.
Hangar One was built in 1933 as a West Coast base for the Navy’s “lighter-than-air” aviation program. The hangar was constructed to house the USS Macon, a massive airship that crashed off the California coast just two years later.
Hangar One however continued to be put to good use, despite the untimely demise of the Macon. For decades, it was used to house training aircraft – something that Jake Gale, a retired flight engineer, remembered from his days in the Navy.
In 1979, Gale landed at Moffett Field, where he went through training and later rose through the ranks before retiring in 1993. His retirement party was held at Hangar One, he said.
“People remember the planes flying over their house when they were kids and going to the air shows,” Gale recounted. “We used to float hot air balloons inside the hangar. It was so big.”
In 1994, NASA Ames took over Moffett Field, including Hangar One, after the closure of the naval air base.
A few years later, NASA and other regulatory agencies discovered toxins in the wetlands near Moffett Field. The toxins were identified as polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, and traced back to Hangar One. The material used to make the hangar’s external siding was the source of the PCBs. Further investigations revealed toxic lead paint and asbestos in the siding and frame paint as well.
“It was quite a cocktail of contaminants,” Gale said.
In 2003, Hangar One was closed to human use, as required by the federal Toxic Substances Control Act. Several years later, the Navy sought to tear down the hangar to mitigate the contamination. The proposal sparked strong community opposition that led to the formation of the Save Hangar One Committee, a group spearheaded by Lenny Siegel, a former Mountain View mayor and director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, a nonprofit that monitors Superfund sites.
“It was a very broad coalition of people who probably didn’t normally work with each other to save the hangar,” Siegel said. “It involved environmentalists like me, preservationists and some Navy veterans who were prepared to sit down in front of bulldozers.”
Gale, who was a part of the group, recounted attending numerous Arts and Wine festivals to circulate a petition in support of saving the hangar. In the end, he collected thousands of signatures, he said.
Ultimately, the Navy backed down and did not take a wrecking ball to Hangar One. Instead, it came up with a plan to decontaminate the site, largely by removing the hangar’s roof, siding, windows, doors and other exterior parts and then coating the structure with an epoxy to prevent the toxins from leaching.
Bill Berry, a former deputy director at NASA Ames who sat on the Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board, recounted that the remediation plan had its problems – namely that the epoxy would not hold up well, especially at the joints, and would release toxins if there was ever any penetration to the lead paint below.
“Frankly, the Navy didn’t care,” Berry said. “They figured they could coat it with epoxy and walk away with it and be somebody else’s problem.” The remediation started in 2010 and took three years to complete, ultimately leaving Hangar One as a shell of its former self.
Planetary Ventures restores Hangar One
According to Siegel, fixing Hangar One was well beyond what NASA could manage on its own. So, the agency put out a competitive bid that would allow for a long-term lease of 1,000 acres at Moffett Field, on the condition that whoever took over would restore Hangar One.
Google, through its subsidiary Planetary Ventures, agreed to the terms and signed on to the 60-year lease. At the time, it was estimated that the lease would save NASA approximately $6.3 million in annual maintenance and operation costs and provide $1.16 billion in rent over the entirety of the agreement. According to the deal, Planetary Ventures planned to invest more than $200 million in the property that would include restoring Hangar One.
While Planetary Ventures has not publicly revealed its intentions for Hangar One, some community members have expressed a desire for the facility to benefit the region, potentially as a research or educational hub.
For now though, seeing the hangar’s restoration is the main priority.
“My expectation was that it would never get done,” Gale said. “I’m thrilled. I can’t wait to get up there and see it.”
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