BRUNSWICK

Kestrel Aircraft Company, which employs about 45 people, has been evicted from its engineering and production facility at Brunswick Landing.

Steve Levesque, director of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, confirmed the eviction Thursday.

Levesque said it has been a months-long legal process to get the aerospace company, which joined Brunswick Landing at Hangar 6 in 2011, off the premises. The director said he could not disclose how much money the company owes MRRA in back rent payments, saying it is a legal matter.

The company was no longer a tenant effective Thursday, Levesque said.

According to MRRA, in 2013, Kestrel employed 44 people in Brunswick and Topsham and had an annual payroll of $2.9 million.

The turboprop plane startup merged with the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Eclipse

Aerospace in 2015.

The company has locations in Superior, Wisconsin; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Chicago.

An attempt to reach Kestrel for comment was unsuccessful.

Kestrel initially had bigger plans at Brunswick Landing when it announced it was coming to the former Navy base in 2010, about a year prior to the base’s closure. Between 300 and 600 jobs were envisioned at Brunswick Landing as part of Kestrel’s $100 million project.

But in 2012, Kestrel instead chose to manufacture its turbo-prop aircraft in Wisconsin, after a promise of millions in tax credits. The Wisconsin move was a blow to the town and to the state, which had been in the process of providing Kestrel the financing needed to operate in Brunswick.

Still, at the time, it had predicted 100 positions would be in Brunswick by 2014. Those positions never materialized. Remaining employees in Brunswick focused on design and tooling.

The company had also utilized Southern Maine Community College’s composites program and the University of Maine engineering school.

Kestrel had signed a 20- year lease with MRRA in which the company paid $85,000 a year in rent. However, by 2013, it was reported that Kestrel was already behind on rent payments to MRRA, that it was reportedly late with employee paychecks and failed to pay its employees’ insurance premiums, and that it was delayed in developing its prototype plane.

Still, by 2014, Kestrel had invested $50 million in operations at Brunswick Executive Airport.

Things became rocky between the town of Brunswick and Kestrel in 2014, in a dispute over the aviation company’s claim that the 83,000 square feet of Hangar 6 it was renting was tax-exempt, an an assertion denied by the town.

Since its inception, MRRA has actively wooed the aviation sector — touting the base’s large hangars that once housed submarine hunting aircraft, two air traffic control towers and two 8,000-foot runways — but it hasn’t always been easy. Oxford Aviation’s plans to expand at Brunswick Landing never came to fruition. Tempus Jets, which has a maintenance operation at Brunswick Landing, had reportedly been struggling to pay its debts as of early 2017.

Despite the loss of Kestrel, overall redevelopment of the former base has exceeded expectations. MRRA’s website notes it has brought more than 1,300 jobs at 103 businesses. Two other aerospace companies have found a home at TechPlace, MRRA’s shared manufacturing and development workspace: Engineering firm Greisen Aerospace and Atol Aviation, which plans to produce an amphibious aircraft.

JOHN SWINCONECK contributed to this report.

jlaaka@timesrecord.com