Posted on 08/26/2003 9:31:42 AM PDT by Between the Lines
STANFIELD - Down Love Chapel Road, across from a field of soybeans and corn, lies a little-known footnote to the Cold War.
It's not much to look at from the surface -- two small buildings in front of a 250-foot tower.
But below the weed-covered veneer is a multilevel, nuclear attack- proof bunker built in the early '60s for commercial as well as top- secret government use.
Military jets and Air Force One used to relay communications through the 80,000-square-foot facility -- roughly the size of a Home Depot. AT&T constructed eight such bunkers during the Cold War to ensure vital communications would survive disasters. The Stanfield site was the largest, built at a cost of more than $7 million.
Now the decommissioned mass of concrete, situated on 11 acres about 30 miles east of uptown Charlotte in rural Stanly County, can be yours for the low, low price of $1.5 million.
American Tower officials had wanted to trade the facility to the state for the right to put towers anywhere on state property.
But when negotiations began to stall a few months ago, the company started thinking about who else might be interested in a large underground facility.
The list of potential buyers was enough to prompt Mike Flint, the company's Carolinas general manager, to slowly begin soliciting bidders. A small ad appeared in The Observer over the weekend and in Monday's business section.
So far, only one person has contacted Flint, but he hopes other qualified suitors will follow.
"I thought a bank could use it," Flint said Monday. "It could be an archive for a number of things."
It also could be a paint ball arena. Or a survivalist's dream. Or a trendy nightclub -- think "The Bomb Shelter."
The potential is nearly limitless. When AT&T moved its operations out of the facility in 1991, it took most of the communications equipment housed on the two main levels. The result is a lot of open space that can be configured almost any way you want.
And once you're in, you can stay in for a long time. The structure was designed to accommodate 90 people for 90 days, said former AT&T employee Dexter McIntyre, who grew up near the bunker.
The facility runs on commercial power, but if that were knocked out, two jet turbine engines would supply 750 kilowatts apiece. By comparison, the average house runs on 15 to 20 kilowatts, said Michael Southworth, who manages American Tower's 180 sites in Western North Carolina.
A 300,000-gallon fuel tank served the facility. The engines used about 30 gallons an hour, but the tank never ran dry, McIntyre said. Employees actually pumped out fuel from the '60s when the bunker closed.
Water for the facility was held in a 100,000-gallon tank supplied by three wells beneath the main structure. There is a separate sewage system and trash incinerator.
Air came through three vents and was circulated using several blowers the size of sedans.
Much of the concrete walls are bare, but the offices include such '70s design staples as beige wallpaper and wood paneling. The sinks and toilets in the housing area are made of steel.
The cots and refrigerators are gone, but little reminders of the workers who staffed the facility 24 hours a day remain.
The engine room still has maintenance schedules. One room has a calendar from 1990. Many corners still have floor plans and evacuation routes to the facility's two exits.
There are three 15-ton doors separating the underground from the surface. Two are at the main entrance. The other is by the back door.
Near that exit used to be an office that only employees with top- secret clearance could enter.
McIntyre was one of those special few. Among his jobs was handling Air Force One's communications while it was in the region's airspace.
Back before satellites and other high-tech systems, the president's airborne communications were funneled through secured bases. When the plane left one base's reach, another would pick it up.
McIntyre was at his station the day President Nixon resigned and left Washington.
American Tower officials had no idea of the facility's history when they acquired it.
"If this is what they had then," Southworth said, "what do they have today?"
About the Bunker
Completed in 1967, the 80,000 square-foot structure operated normally with a crew of 30. But it could house 90 people for 90 days in the event of a nuclear attack. A radiation detector and percussion sensors are scattered around the facility.
Huh?
By the time we finished the tour, we realized that all the human skeletons scattered throughout the property were the bones of all the formerly-hopeful real estate brokers trying to dump that white elephant...
It would have been a pretty awesome shooting range site to spray with lead projectiles, until someone from Sacramento eventually came to closed you down, though....LOL
Yeah...but I wouldn't want to live in Arkansas without it...
I can hear the "protected owls" now: WHOOO? WHOOOO?
(shamefully) Sorry, I couldn't resist.....
So9
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