Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. is an old-economy place where metal gets bent and workers get dirty. So when the 114-year-old shipyard felt its franchise slipping away to clean-fingered "systems integration" companies, it decided to fight back.

The result is an unusual partnership between the shipyard and the state of Virginia to create a laboratory and research facility for bringing high technology to the the company's main business, the hard-hat world of building aircraft carriers.

Construction is underway at the Virginia Advanced Shipbuilding and Carrier Integration Center (VASCIC), with Virginia taxpayers paying $58 million to build the center and $40 million to operate it. Not only does the shipyard hope the center will help secure its future as Virginia's biggest manufacturing employer, but the city of Newport News is counting on the project to help revitalize its long-suffering downtown.

The aim for VASCIC is "to make Newport News sort of the center of the universe for aircraft carriers," said shipyard chief executive William Fricks. "We want the Navy to think of Newport News as the number to call if you have any kind of problems with aircraft carriers. It's the 9-1-1 of aircraft carriers."

In truth, Newport News Shipbuilding already serves those roles, being the only shipyard in the nation that builds carriers. But as the Navy gears up for a new generation of ships, Newport News's position is in question.

The Navy is competing for dollars with gee-whiz programs such as ballistic missile defense and the Air Force's F-22 fighter plane. To keep pace, the service has considered changing the way it contracts for new vessels.

Instead of hiring a shipyard to build a carrier, why not hire a systems integrator such as Lockheed Martin to design a warfare system, then let that company simply hire a subcontractor for the metal work?

This line of thought did not sit well with Newport News, which sustains nearly 17,000 employees with two basic product lines: aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.

So the yard came up with the idea for the VASCIC facility two years ago as a way to concentrate and advertise its push into new technologies, and Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) jumped aboard.

The project was a chance to promote high technology and traditional industry at the same time, said state secretary of commerce and trade Barry E. DuVal, a former mayor of Newport News.

"It adds high-paying jobs, it's related to the existing maritime [industry] and it will create what I consider to be spinoff economic development--more demand for restaurants, lodging and so on," DuVal said. "It really is moving the downtown Newport News area back to a vibrant place."

As the center began coming together, the shipyard got some good news: The Navy awarded it the contract for a new carrier and, in a unique arrangement, allowed Newport News to find a subcontractor to handle electronics systems.

Traditionally, the Navy has contracted for electronics on its own and supplied them to the shipbuilder. The new arrangement would allow Newport News to work closer than ever with its subcontractor, designing the ship around the system.

Earlier this year, the shipyard selected Lockheed Martin as its partner, and the Bethesda defense giant will have offices for as many as 100 engineers in the new VASCIC when it opens next June. Other companies, such as Microsoft and Raytheon, are also likely to have offices in the complex, the shipyard said, marking the first time Newport News has worked directly with companies more known for aerospace and computer technology than for heavy construction.

"There was some nervousness at first on the shipyard's part," said Rich Lockwood, director of advanced naval programs for Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems in Moorestown, N.J. But once Newport News realized that Lockheed Martin had no intention of trying to take over the program or angle for a lead role in future programs, he said, the companies began to develop a good working relationship.

"The cultures are different, but at the end of the day a lot of this comes down to the people you're working with and how comfortable you are with each other," said Lockwood, who is helping design the work space in VASCIC and will have his own office there.

The plans for the center resemble something more akin to an advanced fighter plane laboratory than anything typically found around the sprawling shipyard, where some buildings date back a century and workers pedal old-fashioned bicycles past piles of metal on weedy lots.

One part of the project will be a seven-story glass-enclosed office building shaped like the conning tower of a submarine. It connects via skywalk to a long, low, concrete structure containing 123,000 square feet of meeting rooms and research labs. Together they will house some 700 workers.

In the labs, engineers will sit in theaters and watch 3-D simulations of their design plans projected onto a giant screen. They can "walk" through a virtual ship, or send computer-generated workers through it to see if, say, a 5-foot sailor could reach a maintenance box or if a plumber would have to cut through electrical wires to fix a pipe.

Subsystems will be built in the lab, tested and then simply installed on board ships.

"Kind of plug-and-play, so to speak," said Harold Paxton, director of new carrier construction, as he stood atop the vast deck of the carrier Ronald Reagan now being built in dry dock. With the bangs and whirs of workers ringing out from deep within the hull, Paxton said the laboratory approach will be a dramatic change from today's practice of waiting until systems are installed on board before testing how they work together.

The city of Newport News has just as many hopes for the center. For a blighted downtown whose centerpiece in recent years has been a giant empty lot--called the Superblock, left vacant by urban renewal demolitions--the VASCIC offers a tangible taste of progress.

The metal skeleton of the building is rising on historic waterfront property adjacent to the city's Victory Arch, a previously lonely old monument marking the spot where millions of troops filed onto ships to fight World War I in Europe.

The shipyard has also worked with the city to renovate several empty old buildings over the last two years, spreading more than 3,000 of its workers around the downtown. The city has planted trees, put brighter bulbs in its streetlights and now has modest plans to bring in new businesses--a few restaurants, a credit union, a dry cleaner.

After the failure of a big-ticket redevelopment scheme in the 1980s, "we decided we would be opportunistic and . . . wait for the market to float the downtown back and that's what happened," said Paul F. Miller, the city's director of planning and development. "The shipyard got active . . . and we are piece by piece changing the downtown."