I’m pretty sure that Ipswich was closed while Bentwaters was still an active military base…circa 1989/90 (before the “cold war” ended so the Council wouldn’t have known it would soon become available).

Ipswich Council decided to close the municipal airport in 1993, it’s official closure date was actually in 1996, but the protestors hung on for another 2-3 years.
Bentwaters closed down in 1993, it’s A-10’s departing for Germany.
Quite a coincidence of dates don’t you think.
It was stated at the time that Ipswich were considering Bentwaters as some kind of international airport, they already had their eyes on the old airfield for housing development.
What happened to the Bentwaters base housing was interesting. It was sold off and further houses built.
However the people moving in were expecting the former USAF facilities to be made avaliable, shops, sports centres etc, but this never happened, there were a lot of complaints at the time as the whole place was to be considered as a bit of a mini town, all existing, but never developed.
What the situation is like now, I don’t know, I have the impression that many of the base buildings were demolished, and new one’s built, typical bit of MoD/Local Government money wasting, I wouldn’t be surprised if the local residents still have to drive back down the road to Woodbridge for a bit of decent shopping.
The same thing happened at RAF Wethersfield when the USAF moved out, all the facilities were more or less trashed. The MoD police that live up there now more or less have to put up with a ghost town.
The excuse I heard for all this was that the USAF operated on a different voltage system and it would be too expensive to rewire all the buildings, yeah, right.
Incidentally, if Caroline Grace will be spending a bit more time in that part of the world, may I reccomend to her the fantastic smoked fish that you can buy in nearby Orford, quite frankly, I’d move to that area anyday, and take my Spitfire with me, if I had one.