JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas –
As Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland’s newest 144 PN dormitory was being showcased during a ribbon-cutting tour at, Feb. 21, one thought came to mind for Col. Jonathan Wright, 502nd Installation Support Group commander.
“They all get flat screens?” Wright laughed, pointing to a sizeable television that dominated the middle section of a common area in one of the residential suites. “Where was this 10 years ago?”
While the high-definition screens, standard in all 36 of the dorm’s 4-person suites, snagged the most attention during the tour, those in attendance also got a look at more vital elements of life in this building.
The $18 million facility, which will soon host 144 members of the 24th Air Force, boasts an energy efficient design. There are individual bathrooms, a kitchenette loaded with amenities like a convection oven, a dishwasher, and fan cooling units in every room. The building has open-air breezeways designed to cut down on energy costs, and is up-to-code on the latest government safety and efficiency standards, said Carlos Garcia, 502nd Civil Engineering Squadron architect.
“This dorm went through all your typical planning and reviews,” Garcia said. “It took two years to build – from mid-2014 to fall 2016 – and it just makes life easier for everybody.”
The suite model allows for space and energy efficiency as opposed to the usual hallway model with older dorms, Garcia noted.
“And it’ll be much easier for dorm management to handle issues (here) as opposed to running down a hall and wondering which door to knock on,” he added.
These amenities came as the result of a “true team effort” during the planning stages of the project, Wright chimed in.
“These dorms didn’t just pop up overnight,” he said. “This took a tremendous amount of effort, from a host of different groups to get these dorms constructed.”
Wright credited the 502nd CES and Army Corps of Engineers for the building’s design and construction, the 802nd Communications Squadron for laying down wiring, and the 802nd Security Forces for design reviews and “getting everything up to code.”
Col. Bradley Pyburn, 67th Cyberspace Wing commander, is responsible for the men and women who will call the dorm home over the coming years.
“Having this building up and running is special for our command team,” Pyburn said. “We’re a tenant wing, so we depend on JBSA-Lackland for support.”
Pyburn’s wing plans to house more than 40 of its Airmen at the dorm. During their stay, these Airmen will continue to ensure the security of Air Force cyber presence by defending JBSA’s networks from cyber attacks and maintaining an offensive capability.
“We need to be able to make bad things happen to bad people,” Pyburn added, “so this dorm is literally enabling our wing to carry out its mission.”
Airman 1st Class Zachary Wyre, 90th Cyberspace Operations Squadron cyber transport systems specialist, and Airman 1st Class Austin Davies, 502nd Communications Squadron client systems technician, will both take up residence in the dorm soon.
For Wyre, who enlisted in June 2015, the accommodations are a big step up from his current housing.
“This is great; it’s a lot newer,” Wyre said. “You don’t have to share a bathroom, and you get a lot more space.”
Davies, who joined the Air Force in October 2015, said the additional breathing room speaks for itself.
“The kitchen’s nicer, there’s a convection oven, and the common area is a lot bigger,” he noted.
Airmen can move in the dorm with a group and pick their own roommates, as Davies did, or they can have roommates randomly assigned, Wyre added.
For all the space the facility has to offer Davies and Wyre, Garcia has a feeling Airmen will have at least one reason to come out of their rooms and congregate in the common area of each suite.
“It all goes back to those HD screens,” Garcia chuckled. “That’s what they’ll be fighting over.”