WATERVLIET — U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and U.S. Rep. Mike McNulty, D-Green Island, said at a news conference Tuesday that they want the U.S. Army to implement a $64 million plan to transform 100 acres of the Watervliet Arsenal into a high-tech business park to promote job growth.

Schumer said the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission recommended that the Army spend the $64 million to consolidate the Watervliet Arsenal’s facilities and build new high-tech laboratories, but so far the military has not acted to do so.

“This was a win-win because the military jobs [at the arsenal] would continue, but the $64 million would allow us to rent out a whole lot more space to a whole lot more companies,” he said.

The plan calls for 300,000 square feet of new private-sector buildings and 700,000 square feet of new and renovated mixed-use manufacturing and research and development space. Officials estimate the project could lead to the creation of 1,500 new jobs within the Watervliet Arsenal campus, which is currently home to about 800 Army civilian jobs.

McNulty said the arsenal’s military mission only takes up a small footprint on the sprawling base and the beauty of the development plan is that it preserves those operations while dedicating the unused space to productive purpose.

“The record is that the Watervliet Arsenal reached its height of job development back in World War II and we have been steadily losing jobs at this facility, literally, since the end of the World War II,” McNulty said. “That has only stabilized in the last few years and the reason it has stabilized, in my opinion, is because of the [Arsenal Business & Technology Partnership].”

The Arsenal Business & Technology Partnership is the not-for-profit corporation founded in 2001 that manages a section of the Arsenal campus devoted to private business development. According to officials, 20 businesses, including high-tech companies such as M + W Zander and Vistec Lithography, occupy the partnership’s area of the base.

Partnership President Tony Gaetano said the development plan would include turning over the land on the base to the city of Watervliet and the town of Colonie, a different arrangement from the Arsenal Business & Technology Partnership, which leases its space directly from the Army. He said the Army has retained the right to terminate leases with private companies on the base now in the event the space was needed for military use.

“Right now there are four stages of [lease] termination language in all of the contracts that we have, however, if [the Army] conveys the property, the rights would change,” Gaetano said. “Would [the Army] be able to have the same termination process for land they did not own? No. But, we’ve guaranteed them that if they need additional capacity we’d provide it.”

Gaetano said the development project would maintain the status quo of the partnership’s lease agreements with the Army.

“We would still be in a position to contract with the army to develop space that they continue to own and some of our existing tenants would be in that space. We retain the relationship that we now have and [we would] be able to develop the additional space,” he said.

McNulty refused to say which Army officials he and Schumer have been dealing with regarding the issue. He said they plan to meet with U.S. Army Secretary Preston “Pete” Geren, a former Democratic congressman from Texas, in April.

“I’m a very strong supporter of our veterans . . . but the people who work in the Pentagon, the bureaucrats, I do not have a very high opinion of because they seem to be almost resistive of change, even if the change is good,” McNulty said. “I think when we lay out all of our cards on the table to someone as reasonable as Secretary Pete Geren, that he’ll agree with us.”