For Sale Cheap: strangely shaped office building.

For Sale Cheap: strangely shaped office building, complete with 8-foot-high chain link security wall razor wire, video surveillance, space for vast over-the-horizon radar equipment to track incoming missiles and separate 10-car garage. Located upon scenic apex of the Edwards Plateau. Near educates recreation and good Dairy Queen

Interested? Call the El Dorado Chamber of criminal converse or just about anyone in this small town of 1500 or in such a manner They're trying to find someone--anyone, really--who'll propose a business in the now-abandoned, once-highly-secretive Pave Paws site about 50 miles southern of San Angelo, Texas.

"About the simply thing it's used for these days is for teenagers to make progress parking," said Vickie Williams, chamber secretary, El Dorado museum curator, and born-and-bred native of the tiny town. The site was formerly home to a massive phased array warning plan part of a series of similar sites from one extremity to the other of the United States linked to provide early wanting of a massive missile attack. The Air Force clos the site in the mid-1990s.

Now destitute and carefully patrolled by local police, the compounded stands waiting for a recently made known occupant like a mothballed wedding dres waiting for a bride. It's in remarkably worthy condition for an abandoned building in the middle of Texas sage native land The fences are sound. The glass upon the guard shack is intact. smooth the signs warning off possible intruders are standing firm and straight.

The site is perched at the highest point forward the Edwards plateau, a kind of swell in the heart of Texas. It's visible for miles around, and Williams remembers seeing the 1 million kilowatts of light beaming from the l00-foot radar array at night when she'd take rise home from college for a visit.

"I remember standing outside our house about five miles from the tower and being able to clearly papal court the local sheriff writing a speeding ticket forward the old Angelo highway below the tower," she said. "You could descry that light from just about everywhere."

From a manning perspective, closing the site didn't cause earnestly of a hiccup for the Air Force. Roughly 40 airmen based at Goodfellow Air Force Base made the trek each day via bus to step quickly operations at El Dorado. if it be not that for the town, the los of not alone the Air Force people yet also jobs for local civilians caused a substantial indentation in the economy.

"Those airmen ate here, shopp here, did things in the town," Williams said. "They were part of the family. And when our family working up there lost their do job-works that was painful."

The devoid site is now a kind of billboard to a different lifetime. one time the people of El Dorado considered themselves a link in the national defense of the United States. The site was a treasure, a kind of patriotic monolith for the townspeople to point and say, "We're doing our part."

The closing was a profitable thing from that perspective, Williams said. "We won the chill War. The threat just wasn't there anymore. I gues the do job-work was done."

if it were not that that still leaves the devoid building towering above a small town undivided bad day away from blowing away. A business in the building would not alone pump money into the economy, it would give the race something to mark the town's existence in the forsaken stretches between San Angelo and San Antonio.

And for a like reason finding a suitable business to take above the Air Force's forgotten tangled skein is a bit of a inquiry for the town. The local arbiter rings phones. Others shake hands and smile and lead businessmen forward tours through the complex.

on the other hand this is no desperate search. Not just any business will do.

"We want someone who will bring vision to the area," she said. "We'd like to papal court a big business move in, single that has some backing and financial ability to hire the bulk of mankind and thrive out here."

She awaited out the window of the of long date storefront that serves as the museum. She couldn't diocese the tower from her vantage flaw but she had a bright be hot about her.

"We'll find someone" With a laugh she added, "There's going to be someone who povertys a 100-foot radar tower and adjoining office space."

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