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FORT HUACHUCA — New family neighborhoods will be sprouting up on this Southern Arizona Army post.
The post is one of the last Army installations to have its family housing program privatized. For the next half century, Michaels Military Housing will have the lease on 600 acres of fort land.
“The ground lease made us responsible for family housing,” said Ron Hansen, senior vice president of the New Jersey-based company.
It’s not just a matter of maintaining the facilities. It is developing new neighborhoods that will eventually consist solely of single-family structures, Hansen said. There will be no more duplexes.
 This graphic shows where housing projects will be built on Fort Huachuca. (Courtesy of Fort Huachuca and Michaels Military Housing) |
And even though the construction industry is currently going through financial hard times, Michaels Military Housing will be partnering with two local builders, Castle & Cooke and R.L. Workman Homes, to build new houses based on their own existing designs, he said.
“This also is good news for subcontractors in the area,” Hansen added.
More than a year ago a presentation was made to Army officials highlighting the benefits of Michaels Military Housing proposal, including the partnership with local construction companies, said Rick Coffman, vice president and general manager for Castle & Cooke Arizona.
“We believed that offering the same plans soldiers are buying (off post) is a vote for wanting the same type of houses they will want to rent on the post,” he said of what was said during the presentation.
Knowing the area is helpful and having available subcontractors is another plus for the program, Coffman said.
“By doing it locally it will be helping the local economy,” he said.
Another plus is that the fort and off-post communities have an excellent relationship, which will be strengthened, the Castle & Cooke official said.
Although the local housing economy is hurting, the trouble is not as deep as elsewhere in the nation, he said.
The advantage of having a steady, known project to work on is a plus for Castle & Cooke and R.L. Workman Homes and both companies’ subcontractors, Coffman noted.
In the next five years, it is expected about $85 million of work will be done, to include constructing new streets, putting all utilities underground, building a community center and walking trails and sports fields. The funds for the privatization program for demolishing, constructing and maintaining family housing units will come from investors and no longer be provided by the government through congressional appropriations.
Of the five-year plan, Castle & Cooke will be constructing 61 homes and the community center, Coffman said. The work also includes some of the neighborhood infrastructure.
“We expect to start in the latter part of the first quarter of next (calendar) year,” he said. “This will be a great (economic) shot in the arm.”
For R.L. Workman Homes, the Michaels Military Housing plan indicates the local company will construct 140 housing units.
Bob Workman, who along with his wife, Karen, owns R.L. Workman, once lived in one of the family housing units on the fort. He said the briefing before Army officials in Baltimore last Dec. 7 involved a lot of hard work.
While in Maryland, he said he talked about the homes the company could build, and his wife spoke about what military families want in on-post quarters.
Like Castle & Cooke, R.L. Workman Homes has constructed a number of developments in the Sierra Vista area, as well as in Hereford and Benson.
Not only will the exteriors of the new post homes be exciting, the interiors will include quality upgrades like “granite slab countertops,” Workman said.
The object is to give a military family something they would purchase themselves if they lived off the fort, he said.
Most of the infrastructure for the new neighborhoods will be put in by another local company, KE&G, Workman added.
What this means for the local work force are guaranteed jobs “during this time of economic uncertainty,” he emphasized.
Hansen said that while the construction cost is about $85 million, the overall estimate of money to be put into the initial part of the program is $130 million.
During the 50-year lease given to Michaels Military Housing, there will be interior upgrades for such things as kitchens in the historic homes, as well as making the newer homes better as the years progress, he said.
Workman said he is grateful to Michaels Military Housing for giving “my small company a chance to participate.” Most of the funds staying in the local community is another benefit to the area’s economy, he added.
While all the new homes will be single-family units, the only exception to replacing duplexes comes in the fort’s historic area, where some duplex family quarters go back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.
That means areas where new housing was built a few years ago, some of which include duplexes, will be torn down and replaced by single-family homes, Hansen said.
Sylvia Pete, the post’s housing division chief and manager of the residential communities initiative, the latter the privatization program, said some of the “six-plexes” that were on the post are gone, meaning no longer will junior enlisted soldiers have to live in cramped, two-bedroom quarters “where the walls are so thin they can hear what their neighbors are saying and they can smell what is being cooked for dinner next door.”
The residential communities initiative is the privatization program.
Under the program, the number of family housing units will decrease, but the quality will increase, Pete said.
There are now 1,365 family housing units — 299 duplexes, 20 six-plexes and 647 single homes on the post. As part of the privatization program, 500 units will be demolished and replaced by 201 units, which means some areas where housing now exists will become vacant and returned to the fort for other uses or left fallow, Pete said.
There will no longer be two-bedroom quarters, because the smallest size unit will be three-bedroom with a one-car garage, Pete said.
The smallest housing unit on the fort currently is 1,143 square feet, and the largest is 5,696 square feet. The newer single units will range from 1,696-square-foot, three-bedroom homes, with one-car garages to 2,774-square-foot standards, four-bedroom units with three-car garages. The homes will be assigned based on rank, and the neighborhoods will be rank-based, according to documents provided by Hansen.
When it comes to the largest housing unit on the fort, Pershing Quarters, or as the military calls it “Quarters 1,” it is assigned to the senior commander on the post and currently is occupied by Maj. Gen. John Custer, commander of the Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca, as well as his wife and daughter.
The historical homes will be maintained, and any renovations will have to keep their historic concept, said Hansen, who maintains an office on the fort. He has an office staff of two: Joe Gandara, the project director, and Stacey Loucks, administrative assistant.
Another area constructed 50 years ago is considered historic and will be maintained as built, he said.
In that area is a two-story stone duplex built in 1939 for warrant officers, but it is now where the fort’s housing division and Michaels have offices. Hansen said it ultimately will be converted into a neighborhood center.
The new housing will have a Southwestern feel.
Hansen said having local partners makes sense because they know the style of homes that people like, whereas a national contractor is not always that knowledgeable about issues such as Southwest architecture.
Additionally, each builder has been asked to use the same kind of appliances in the homes they will build, so Michaels Military Housing will have the same items in stock to replace units that may go bad, Hansen said.
Pete said the home styles aren’t all that will change. So will how the military sponsors living in them pay for that privilege.
Members of all branches of the military assigned to the fort, which include Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, do not get their housing allowances in their paychecks. But they will now receive their housing allowances and will have to pay that amount in rent to Michaels, she said.
All of the family quarters will soon be metered to determine how much utilities — electricity, natural gas and water — are used. Once a baseline is established for each type of house, the military sponsor will get that amount in pay to reimburse Michaels, she said.
Any costs above the baseline determination “will come out of the soldier’s pocket,” Pete said.
No military personnel or their family members living in military housing currently do not pay for utilities, as that cost is absorbed by the fact they are not being paid their housing allowance.
Housing allowance rates this year range from about $900 to more than $1,800 a month, based on a person’s rank.
As part of the new neighborhood concept, the Bonnie Blink area, which currently is set aside for senior noncommissioned officers, those in pay grades E7 to E9 will become housing units for families of second lieutenants to captains, according to the plans.
A whole new neighborhood area for senior NCOs will be constructed, documents indicate.
Pete said that because the fort has been the recipient of funds to construct military housing units, many of the areas are new, and with Michaels now taking over the maintaining and building of new units for families the post will even be better.
“The Army’s legacy funds have helped us manage and maintain decent housing,” she said, noting privatizing the program was off the post’s “radar screen for a long, long time.”
Hansen said Michaels Military Housing also obtained the lease for the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground, and it has a number of other military installations as part of its program, which includes Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; Andrews Air Force Base, Md.; and MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.
Family members living on post also will no longer have to maintain the common areas in front of each family quarters, he said. But families will be responsible for their backyards, which is normally where their children play and where they keep pets.
The company will be hiring about two dozen employees to do maintenance and other work, he said.
Pete noted the post work force will go down slightly because Michaels will take over some of the work.
Both agreed the end result will probably be a wash, with the reduction in post workers balanced by the company’s employment of people.
Emphasizing that safety and security is part of Michael’s neighborhood plan, Hansen said no major roads carrying work traffic will go through them.
He, Gandara, Loucks and Pete all have lived in military family quarters, either while serving on active duty or as a family member.
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
Winston Smith wrote on Nov 7, 2008 7:34 PM: