LORDSTOWN – The company proposing to build a shipyard in Lorain and locate an affiliate supply, equipment and service depot in Lordstown will be joined by union leaders and elected officials next week to rally behind the multibillion project at the city on the lake.

Planned to join Bartlett Maritime Corporation at Monday’s event in Lorain are representatives from the Ohio AFL-CIO, the AFL-CIO’s Metal Trades Department and U.S. lawmakers, Congressman Tim Ryan, D-Howland, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Bartlett Maritime Corporation, led by former U.S. Navy Capt. Ed Bartlett, is the Broadview Heights-based company behind the plan to construct a new submarine drydock facility in Lorain and the component repair facility in Lordstown at the Ohio Commerce Center.

“Union workers built this country and strengthened our national security. Ohioans in Lorain, Lordstown and across the state are ready now to do our part by expanding and improving our Naval shipyard performance,” said Tim Burga, president, Ohio AFL-CIO. “Strategic investments in the Marine Highway are crucial to the Navy’s efficiencies and readiness and workers in Ohio and the Great Lakes region have what it takes to advance this mission.”

Proposed for on the Black River in Lorain, the facility would be the fifth public naval shipyard in the U.S.

In Lordstown, the proposed 700,000- to 1-million-square-foot depot would be designed to accommodate growth to service Lorain and the other existing shipyards in Portsmouth, N.H.; Norfolk, Va.; Pearl Harbor; and Puget Sound, Wash.

The facilities, Bartlett has said, would help to ease a maintenance logjam in the U.S. Navy.

Bartlett predicts about 1,000 workers in Lordstown and about 3,000 in Lorain, but that workforce could grow if the Navy grows its submarine numbers, “so our plan is to create facilities with room to grow in both of them.”

Bartlett Maritime’s proposal would need Navy approval. The plan would include a public / private partnership through existing legislation that allows for capital financing to build the facilities, Bartlett said.