Real Estate – Decommissioned radar base

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Ok…this looks…interesting.

Assuming the buildings and infrastructure aren’t falling apart, this looks like an interesting opportunity for someone who wants a property capable of housing more than just the immediate family.

A little out of my price range but….interesting nonetheless. Nice to know there are places like this out there.

24 thoughts on “Real Estate – Decommissioned radar base”

  2. Looks interesting. The condition, location, and current tenant leases make me wonder… The price seems good for what you get, but it reminds me of the town in West Virginia that the Navy and NSA couldn’t sell and end up giving to a university. Very few people are looking for a compound like that (and even fewer can afford it).

    Don’t forget – One of the problems with utility scale infrastructure are utility scale costs for upkeep, and often special licensing is required as well.

  3. That does indeed look very interesting and the price is nice too. My only concern is that if the USA went toe to toe with a near-peer (China, Russia), that former radar base could still be a nuke target because somebody forgot to read a memo.

    • Given the capital commitment to a nuclear missile, I’d imagine those targetting profiles are updated often enough to preclude wasting a billion-ruble or billion-yuan missile on a buncha gophers and tumbleweeds.

      • Indeed. Most people simply don’t have a clue how expensive nuclear weapons are – the warheads (acquisition and absolutely required maintenance, or they don’t go boom), the delivery systems (missile, aircraft), etc…

        For many years, the plutonium alloy used in the warheads was literally, the most expensive thing on earth, on a price/weight basis…Now, it’s antimatter.

      • Bear in mind that you are talking about bureaucrats, both in and out of uniform, and they tend to not be very competent at their jobs, so…

  4. While $549,000 (and in cash?) isn’t cheap, for what is included I find myself wondering what is the catch? Toxic waste dumped on site by the Air Force? Lead paint and/or asbestos that needs to be remediated? Or is it just that it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere?

    • Mostly that last thing. The zoomies probably stationed people there as a form of disciplinary action.

      • J. Edgar Hoover was known to send agents that displeased him to Butte, Montana for their next duty assignment. My uncle crossed an officer in the military and got to spend a year in Thule, Greenland. He did mention that the Danish flight attendants that had a lay over/fueling at the base were quite entertaining.

    • They’re pretty much in the middle of no where, for the most part. Here in MN they’re right in the middle of corn crops. Also, there are usually two of the areas a mile or two apart– one houses the troops and crews, the other houses the missiles in their silos. Taking a look around, there are three or four surrounding the MPLS/St Paul area, and (IIRC) one near Mankato. Scoot across the border and you can find half a dozen Nike sites in the Dakotas. Of course, they’re spread around the whole of CONUS.

  5. Now this does look interesting. Just as long as it has been removed from the nuclear targeting lists of military sites. The ChiComs, Russians and of course the Haircut in. North Korea would be a concern. The Haircut can’t get his rockets to fly straight.
    Wonder if the land would support food production on a medium scale. Winters would be rough. All that open land with nothing to brunt the wind. Pros and cons to everything I guess.

  6. Hmmm- Well you would be able to see them coming, that’s for sure. Infrastructure for 2,000 people. It looks a lot better than most ex-military bases, at least from the photos. Lot of undeveloped land to expand housing (I saw a ‘survival retreat’ once in Europe that used reinforced Yurts that would work well here). Maybe could grow Crops, cattle grazing. Online businesses for income……Hmmmm.

  7. It’s way off to hell and gone, which has pros and cons. It has current tenants, which is a real concern.

    80 acres is very nice, and if nothing else it should support a few head of cattle.

    Windmills are good, but you’d want good batteries to back them, and someone who has the parts and know how to service them. Definitely need to investigate that further.

    30% down is just a hair shy of $165k. Depending on your time horizon and events beyond our control, it could work out as a vacation pace until The Events, and perhaps have the tenants pay the mortgage.

    Winters will indeed be brutal, but summers should be very tolerable.

    Lots of unknown here, but indeed very interesting.

  8. Seems like a very reasonable price.
    Others have made some valid points about the cost of upkeep though.
    Interesting to find out how much income the current tenants are producing.

  9. Are the tenants the current owners? If not, why haven’t they bought it? What’s wrong with this picture?
    One of the problems I see is that it has too little acreage. It really needs an airstrip that can handle business jets, to broaden the appeal. At least one that can handle single engine GA aircraft, if nothing else.

  10. What I don’t see is when the base was decommissioned. Whatever that date was, you can figure all the infrastructure (streets, roofs, water, sewage, etc.) began falling apart at that point. You can bet that the photos provided were selected with care and are the best of the best. Also, in the business world, we tend to think “scalability” always has to do with expansion, scaling up; but in this case, how easily can this infrastructure be scaled down to a group of say 30-40 instead of the 2,000 it was designed to support. Very interesting possibilities here and something that I wouldn’t think would be on the market very often.

    • If memory serves, all the Nike-Herc bases were decommissioned in the early 70s– like 1970-71.

  11. I could very well see a ‘group’ of LMI’s kicking in and getting this and setting it upas their ‘weekend place’.
    Would make a great family compound if the family had a non-geographically based business.

    • I think it would more likely some church or other organization would buy it as their ‘bible camp’.

  12. The former Havre (Mt) Air Force Station….

    Does this thing have any actual bunker-type facilities? The descriptions are just talkin about a few 1950’s era government buildings…

    • If this is a decommissioned Nike base, the bunker-type n facilities were “down range” a mile or more from the barracks and admin center.

  14. A friend and I looked into this. Decommissioned in 2014, 3 leasers, Border Patrol is leasing one floor of the silo for $1k a month. A farmer is leasing the acreage outside the fence for $2500 a month and another local is renting the workshop for $500, that’s a total of $4k a month generated. All leases can be nixed quickly. It has been listed off and on since initial purchase, price keeps going up. The 2 downsides that really made it less than viable is low moisture annually and no trees, hence no firewood . Even with 7 wells the ground water is being drained by everyone around and that could be a problem. I would imagine the government spared no expense in putting in those wells, so they might be very deep. You could probably get it for 400K. Lots of infrastructure, lots of maintenance.

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