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Bruce Schwab demonstrates using a crimping tool at Brunswick’s Advanced Technology Center earlier this month.

BRUNSWICK — General Dynamics invests $40 million in an expansion project at its Bath shipyard.

Athenahealth of Watertown, Mass., acquires a 130,000-square-foot building in Belfast, and CEO Jonathan J. Bush Jr. announces plans to hire 600 workers over the next several years.

Bowdoin College graduate J. Hilary Rockett Jr. and his partner, Joe Thibert, are investing $25 million to build Maine Street Station, a proposed complex of offices, retail stores, restaurants, a hotel and a train station in downtown Brunswick. The project could create 250 jobs.

The city of Bath invests $2 million to acquire 26 acres so it can expand its Wing Farm business park, a project that will create space for up to 10 new businesses.

All across the midcoast, there are signs that the economy is robust and moving forward.

But there is also an underlying sense of dread as the date for closing the Brunswick Naval Air Station draws closer.

The impact could be felt sooner than anticipated. Base redevelopment officials say that some military families will relocate to Jacksonville, Fla., this fall.

Once that happens, the mass exodus will have begun. More than 2,300 homes that are owned by or rented to military families in the region are expected to become vacant between now and the Sept. 2011 base closure.

"I think we have to manage our expectations because the base-closure experts tell us that all base-closure communities will go through a slowdown and there is no question we will have an abundant supply of housing," said Mathew Eddy, Brunswick's director of economic development.

Eddy also serves as the chairman of the Midcoast Council for Business Development and Planning, a nonprofit development company whose mission is to retain existing businesses and recruit new ones to the Brunswick, Sagadahoc and Lincoln region.

Despite those concerns, there is reason to be optimistic. Eddy cited a string of major expansion projects that are under way -- all in Brunswick -- and are linked to the composites industry.

Expansion projects at Brunswick Technologies Inc., Harbor Technologies and Allied Composites are indicators that the industry -- at least in Brunswick -- is growing.

Those industries are now being fed with students from the new Maine Advanced Technology Center on Industry Road in Brunswick.

ATC Director Steven Schaefer said more than 200 students have enrolled at the center since it opened last year in the former Brunswick Times Record newspaper building.

The campus, which serves as a satellite to the Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, trains students in subjects such as marine rigging and closed-mold technology.

There won't be any new development occurring at the Brunswick Naval Air Station this year. In fact, there probably won't be any new tenants at the base until late 2010 at the earliest, according to Steve Levesque.

Levesque, who serves as director of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, said all his agency can do now is market the base to prospective tenants.

"People have to understand that business development has a long incubation period," Levesque said.

Levesque sees the midcoast economy hinging on the successful redevelopment of the Navy base. Problem is, there won't be any new development until after the Navy has completed its mission in four years.

Aware that there will be a down period after the Navy base closes, communities feel a sense of urgency to fill that space with new businesses and jobs.

Brunswick is investigating the feasibility of developing one of two sites located in western Brunswick for a business park.

Many town officials now believe a business park is essential.

"We need to move forward with this" business park, Brunswick Councilman David Watson remarked during a recent discussion of the topic....