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A recently renovated on-base house provides a “five-star experience” for VIP guests to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, but taxpayers have picked up the seven-figure tab.
The Air Force in 2009 and 2010 spent $1.24 million, plus $77,000 in furnishings, to renovate the Charles Taylor House, a 3,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom Tudor-style brick home. The final expenditure was about $400,000 more than the project’s initial estimated cost.
The house, named for the Wright brothers’ mechanic, is on the base’s Area A, near Gate 9-A.
The historic building, which was vacant prior to the renovation, essentially serves as a hotel for what the military refers to as “distinguished visitors” — officers ranking colonel or above — and civilian executives.
Under Air Force policy, distinguished visitors must stay in on-base lodging, which the military designs to be self-funding by charging agencies sending the VIPs $53.25 a night.
The Charles Taylor House is located less than a mile from the Hope Hotel, a privately run business that is directly adjacent to the base. But Air Force policy stipulates that VIPs can stay there only if there are no on-base facilities available, said base spokesman Daryl Mayer.
“The decision Air Force-wide and (Department of Defense) wide is that it’s more cost-effective to operate lodging facilities,” Mayer said.
But the Taylor House has been unused about two-thirds of the time during this fiscal year. That has led base officials to recently loosen restrictions on who can stay there in an attempt to boost its occupancy rate. Still, even if the building had a visitor every night, it would take about 68 years at $53.25 a night to cover construction costs.
The building won an interior design award in 2010 from Air Force Materiel Command and features a professional-grade kitchen. Guest feedback has been positive, said base spokesman John Klemack.
“It’s a five-star experience,” he said.
The Dayton Daily News first inquired about the house after a reader called the newspaper to complain about the project’s cost. Base officials took more than two months to arrange a telephone interview, then declined to allow newspaper staff on base to view the house’s interior and photograph the building.
In a telephone interview, Mayer acknowledged that the project was expensive.
“There’s no denying the fact that if we were looking at that same circumstance today, we would not make the decision to do this,” he said.
The federal stimulus played a role in the project being green-lighted, even though it was not paid for through the stimulus. Base management operated under a mentality to launch construction projects to try to create work opportunities, Mayer said.
“The prevailing mood in the federal government at the time was to execute shovel-ready projects,” he said.
The Air Force in September 2009 awarded Cincinnati-based Megen Construction a no-bid, $1 million construction contract. Of that, $847,000 was to pay for renovations to the Taylor House to replace an old, distinguished visitors quarters. The project was not bid out because Megen Construction, which received a total of $48 million in federal contracts that year, is an 8(a) firm. That means the Small Business Administration has deemed it to be a small, disadvantaged business.
Air Force leadership picked an unused brick duplex, which the military in 2004 nominated along with 100 other nearby 1930s-era brick Tudor-style officers quarters for the National Register of Historic Places.
Mayer said the renovation costs went up as military officials aimed to preserve the house’s historic features while contractors discovered lead paint, old wiring and asbestos insulation.
A Dec. 21, 2009, letter from a base official to the Ohio Historical Preservation Office indicated that base officials asked contractors to rebuild metal lathe and plaster and wood molding in the house after a contractor demolished it without permission.
Base officials held a ceremonial opening for the house in September 2010, inviting Charles Taylor’s family to take part, according to the Skywrighter, a base newspaper. The final price tag, including $77,000 in furnishings: $1.31 million.
Even though the project wouldn’t be performed in today’s budgetary climate, it wasn’t a waste of money, base spokesmen said. The Air Force now has a better idea of how much it would cost to renovate the other 100 brick quarters, something it would like to do eventually so they are in good enough shape that a private company that manages all other on-base housing will agree to take them over. That could be pricey, although Air Force officials don’t know how much it will cost.
“I think we would know today before we go into this exactly what it’s going to take before we get these (the brick officer’s quarters) up to speed,” Mayer said. “Our initial estimate is going to be sounder, and our decision will have better information to decide whether to do it at all.”
The Tudor-style houses were designed by notable Prussian-born, Detroit-based architect Albert Kahn, said Barb Powers, head of the Ohio Historic Preservation Office’s inventory and registration department.
“They show a very high quality of design with attention to materials and details. ... It’s seen as an example of military housing reflecting architectural design qualities of this time period,” Powers said.
While preserving historic structures has a cost, there’s also a gain, Powers said.
“Those are distinctive places that people visit to seek out to live in and to stay in,” she said.
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