NASA is opening up roughly 1,736 acres at its Neil Armstrong Test Facility near Sandusky for long-term lease, pitching the vast Lake Erie campus as a fresh engine for industry and research jobs in the region. The agency has carved the property into five large parcels and set a July 2, 2026 deadline for proposals. Winning tenants could lock in multi-decade Enhanced Use Leases aimed at drawing aerospace, technology and industrial partners.
In an announcement from Glenn Research Center, NASA outlines five parcels that range from about 184 to 516 acres, with two located inside the facility’s controlled-access fence. Prospective tenants can bid on single parcels, pieces of a parcel, or mix-and-match combinations. Selected proposers would negotiate Model Enhanced Use Leases with a 20-year base term and two additional 10-year options. The solicitation and application instructions are available through the agency’s procurement channels, according to NASA.
What's on offer and who can apply
The land on the table is a blend of open farmland and wooded areas, plus one tract that comes with an existing warehouse of roughly 15,000 square feet, according to local reporting. NASA’s notices and industry outreach point to potential uses that include aerospace testing and manufacturing, research or innovation campuses, and data centers. Proposals can be tailored to entire parcels or slices of them. Those details line up with the public Announcement for Proposal posted on procurement platforms such as GovTribe.
Past testing, reactor history and cleanup
Today’s leasing push comes on ground with a long and sometimes intense history. The Armstrong Test Facility site started life as a World War II ordnance plant, then was taken over by NACA and later NASA for remote propulsion and materials testing. The campus once housed a 60-megawatt research reactor and hosted rocket-engine programs in the 1960s and early 1970s, as recounted by WIRED. NASA and its contractors have since carried out removal actions and soil cleanup projects on portions of the property, work documented in a removal-action completion report by the NASA Glenn Research Center.
Local pitch, partners and timeline
As the agency weighs offers, NASA says it plans to solicit community feedback and prioritize tenants that can plug into the site’s existing infrastructure while boosting local employment. Local reporting notes that NASA is marketing the property alongside JobsOhio, Team NEO, Erie County economic development officials and the Greater Sandusky Partnership, with an expectation of roughly 60 days to screen incoming proposals before advancing strong fits to lease negotiations. Carlos Flores, a Glenn Realty official, told Crain's Cleveland Business that "the true goal is to create partnerships beneficial to NASA and the local economy of Northeast Ohio."
Prospective proposers are directed to review the Announcement for Proposal on SAM.gov and may request property access through NASA’s real-estate contacts at [email protected]. For the Lake Erie corridor, the offering amounts to a rare shot at turning large, contiguous federal acreage into new commercial and research hubs just outside Sandusky.
