ENID — On weekends, Vance Air Force Base is quiet, going into what 71st Flying Training Wing commander Col. Chris Nowland calls “Sleepy Hollow mode.”

That all will change this fall with the opening of Armed Forces Reserve Center being built on the south end of the base.

Construction is ahead of schedule for the $18.7 million facility, which will feature a 60,000-square-foot training building and 9,000-square-foot vehicle maintenance building, known as Organizational Maintenance Shop.

The contracted completion date is Oct. 27, but the project is expected to be finished before then.

Ground was broken in June for AFRC, which resulted from action by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure commission. To date, said Maj. Dan Maloy, 71st FTW chief of BRAC, the project is about 7 percent ahead of schedule, despite the recent winter storms.

Construction is being done by TCI, a La Crosse, Wis., firm. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing construction of AFRC, said Lewis Hollis, director of Vance’s civil engineer flight.

“They (TCI) have done a fantastic job,” said Maloy. “It is being built here but the Army is funding it.”

The 2005 BRAC commission decided to build seven AFRCs in the state to combine Guard and Reserve units and close outdated buildings those units were occupying.

The facility, which upon completion will become the largest single building at Vance, is expected to become the new home of two Army National Guard units and one Army Reserve unit.

The units scheduled to move into AFRC at Vance are Company B of the Army National Guard’s 1-179th Infantry Battalion, Detachment 1 of Company A of the Army National Guard’s 777th Aviation Support Battalion and Army Reserve’s 401st Engineer Company. At present National Guard’s 45th Fires Brigade, currently based in Enid, is scheduled to be reassigned to an AFRC being built in Mustang.



Busy weekends



There will be between 17 and 23 full-time National Guard and Reserve troops assigned to Vance’s AFRC, but drill weekends could bring as many as 300 people to Enid. Guard and Reserve are expected to move into the Vance AFRC by mid-December.

“That is going to be a huge long-term economic impact for us,” said Mike Cooper, military liaison for the city of Enid. “Now virtually every weekend you will have people spending the night and buying food. That will be a great addition to our sales tax.”

“The base will be more active on weekends, that’s for sure,” said Hollis.

The facility will be accessed by a gate off newly improved Wheat Capital Road south of the base. The $3 million road improvement project was dedicated the same day ground was broken for AFRC. Cooper said the security gate controlling access to the base off Wheat Capital will be called the Chisholm Gate, at the suggestion of local historian Bob Klemme, who has placed markers along the length of the historic Chisholm Trail, part of which crosses the southern edge of Vance.

AFRC’s OMS facility will have room for some 230 vehicles and more than 30 trailers. It will serve as a training facility for Guard and Reserve mechanics. The larger training building will feature an indoor firing range simulator, a kitchen, a library, a family support center, a pre-deployment assembly area, lockers, weapon storage area and an area where classified information can be processed.

Guard and Reserve troops primarily will use Vance AFRC on weekends, when Vance is largely quiet.

“What I think is kind of neat about the whole AFRC concept is that, bringing all the troops here, their impact on our active duty flying training mission is going to be minimal,” said Maloy.



Providing support



Vance’s chief civilian contractor, CSC Applied Technologies LLC, will provide some services to AFRC, including maintenance and custodial services, said Col. Tim Gibson, 71st Mission Support Group commander.

“There will be some impact for us on the support side of the house,” Gibson said. “We expect there are some adjustments we are going to have to make as the hosts of this structure.”

Having Army Reserve and National Guard troops on base, said Gibson, will have an impact on the culture of Vance.





“We will get the opportunity to see things through a different set of eyes, on both sides,” Gibson said.







“I’d say for the active duty personnel stationed here, they’re going to get a lot more of what we call ‘purple,’” said Maloy, referring to the blend of the Air Force’s “blue” and Army “green” cultures, or “a blending in of other military cultures and an understanding of how they do their mission.”

AFRC is being built to energy-efficient Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.



Under construction



AFRC is only one construction project ongoing at Vance. The finishing touches are being put on a $7.7 million facility in which fuel tanks can be safely removed from aircraft during maintenance and inspection. The fuel cell facility is expected to open in April. Also, Vance’s Radar Approach Control facility is undergoing a change from analog to digital radar technology, all while continuing to fly 250 to 270 training missions each day.

A new control tower is in the planning and design stages. The $10.7 million for that project was included as a congressional insert to the most recent Defense Appropriations bill by U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.

“That will be a significant upgrade to our capabilities,” said Gibson. “Most folks know we train pilots here but don’t realize we’re also training controllers, both in the tower and in radar approach control.”

Vance’s tennis courts will soon get an upgrade, thanks in part to $1.5 million Vance won in the Air Education and Training Command Energy Management Incentive contest. Work also will soon begin on a project to upgrade the roads on the base.

“It (the construction) really keeps the base infrastructure as viable for the long-term as possible,” said Gibson.