By Tom Roeder, The Gazette

One of the Air Force’s most secretive bases is now the hub for something unexpected.

Schriever Air Force Base — always ground zero for satellite control, space innovation and missile defense — is now a hot spot for potlucks, children’s soccer and trick-or-treating, commanders say.

The base’s operations are behind a prison-style double fence guarded by heavily armed troops. Airmen at the base are as close-mouthed as ever.

But the addition of 242 houses at Schriever, on the plains east of Colorado Springs, has brought families tricycles, holiday lights and block parties. All to a place that’s known as “Area 52” or “where the Air Force goes when it wants to be alone.”

“It is really starting to change the culture,” said Col. Wayne Monteith, who commands Schriever’s 50th Space Wing.

Home building started at Schriever in 2008 for the most military of reasons. Commanders there wanted critical personnel handy in case of crisis, or, more likely, blizzard.

Built in the ‘80s, Schriever never had quarters for its airmen, even as the based boomed with 8,000 troops and civilian workers.

But winter storms cut the place off from Colorado Springs, where most of the people assigned there lived, and proved an annual inconvenience.

Now, everyone from unit commanders to plow drivers — the folks needed to keep things running in the worst of winter — can walk to work from the houses built on the base as part of a public-private partnership.

But the plan came with a benefit outside the military mission.

“We now have more than 700 family members on base,” Monteith said.

The families brought a social life and vitality the bland but important place had never seen.

“It has given us, as commanders, more interaction with our folks in a casual, family setting,” said Monteith. “I host something at our house once a month.”

The community center on the base is a gathering place for family activities. Football, baseball and soccer have taken over new playing fields.

It hasn’t all been easy. Schriever’s security police have had to get additional training on how to tackle some of the issues that accompany family life while  keeping the base ultra-secure.
Commanders are working to expand a fitness center and build a new youth center to keep up with family demands.

And demand is high for life in the brand-new housing, where the first families moved in during late 2009, community, arguably more secure than any gated community in Colorado.

There’s a lengthy waiting list for the housing project, which can handle less than 10 percent of the troops from the base. All construction was completed last year.

Monteith is sure the dividends of adding spouses and kids and changing the place’s once-dour atmosphere will keep on coming.

“All I see is goodness,” he said.

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