What kind of facility do you meet in?

[Simplex]

We share space with our local CAF Squadron at our county airport. They have a SNJ in the hanger and our a/c is across the field in a separate very small hanger. We have some tables set up for comms, admin and IT. The chairs are set out for classes and then stacked for indoor activities. It's tight, but there is a small kitchen area and it's heated so we're happy to have it.

[a2capt]

We're at an Army Reserve facility that we largely have the run of 2/3rds of the place during most scheduled events. Occasionally it gets tight if a unit is deploying. When they're returning, it's not so bad. Everyone likes to go home.. so stuff somehow gets put away -really- quick.

[Garibaldi]

We have 4 trailers on a NG facility. Fairly nice, but no indoor plumbing.

[Slim]

Army Reserve center (it IS a MIWG thing).  The building used to be part of a Nike missile launch facility, so everything is fairly old and dated, but it's very well suited to us.  We have access to the drill hall, a conference room, an office area/cubicle farm, small kitchen/break room, and a few other areas.  Pretty much everything the cadets do is in the drill hall, seniors use the cube farm, and everything else is as needed.  We have our own code to the gate, and the building code for access, and we're welcome any time, as long as it doesn't conflict with any of the units that use the building.

Walkman, is the inconvenience of dealing with the dust for a few months too much?  If it's only going to be a month or two, I'd suggest dealing with it.  If HVAC is a concern, at the rate we're going here, I don't think we'll see the true heat of summer much before August.  And, our building doesn't have central air either; heating is a boiler/steam, while there is at least one window unit in just about every room in the place. 

Having been a nomad for about 10 years post 9/11, when the squadron was asked to leave the reserve center over security concerns, I'll attest that good meeting places are hard to come by.  In those 10 years, we met at our supply storage facility ( a storage room in a T hangar row at the airport--too hot in summer, ok in the more temperate weeks of fall, but we knew it was time to move when we were buying propane heaters at HoDo in November), a few weeks at a neighboring squadron, a school (asked to leave when they closed for the summer--back to the hangar), a fire station (long term, until we started getting blamed for everything that went wrong there), and a church.

[Walkman]

Walkman, is the inconvenience of dealing with the dust for a few months too much?  If it's only going to be a month or two, I'd suggest dealing with it.

I agree with you that dealing with it in the short term is doable. I need to find another place to do at least PT in. We're also most likely going to do a Mitchell ceremony at the end of April (just needs to pass one most test next week), and I'd like to have a good space for that. Supposedly the drill hall area will be open again at the end of April, but I'm not counting on that until I see it. I'm looking for options so if we get in a pinch for space again, I'll have an idea where to look.

[NIN]

National Guard Armory here. We used to have an office that we shared with the sea cadets. Those dirty nasty squids.

Then they re did the armory and eliminated those offices for bathrooms, and then 9/11 hit and we lost our meeting space entirely for several months. We had to meet at the aviation support facility for a while, until they decided to tear that down and build a joint forces headquarters. So we're back at the armory. We have a room in which we can keep our file cabinets and such, just off of the dining facility. We still have to share that tiny storage room with the sea cadets.

Unfortunately, over the years, our use of the armory has been pared down to that little room, the DFAC, the drill hall, and the bathrooms. The National Guard has eliminated all of the classrooms in the building for office space.  We have a very large squadron, 60 plus cadets, so meetings can get a little chaotic with drill, class room training,  basic training, etc all happening in one large echoey room. We make it work, but it can be a little distracting. 
(ETA: Word is that we're getting booted out of the little storage room due to OSHA exit requirements or some such, and our file cabinets and supply cabinet will be moved to the drill hall. We have a 20-ft connex over behind Wing HQ that is squadron supply, and we'd love to get that moved over behind the armory like many of the Guard units do)

It is a very serious bummer about losing the classrooms, because we used to have access to one large classroom that would seat everybody and two smaller class rooms that were approximately flight size. That allowed us a real high degree of flexibility in our training. Now, when we have a board of review, we hold it in the foyer of the armory, next to the drinking fountain. Thankfully we still have a table and chairs for it. I suspect that the next step will be nothing to sit on.

[Storm Chaser]

I guess we're one of the few lucky ones. We have a dedicated building at an Air Force base. The building has a large class room area, a cadet office that it's also used for flight simulator training, a senior member office with work stations, an ops area, a comm room, a supply room and a commander's office large enough for small staff meetings. This building doubles as an ICP. The flight line, where our plane is parked, is within walking distance as well. And, while not within walking distance, we can use the track and gym for PT. We have a nice setup although, with nearly 100 members, it feels small at times.

[BFreemanMA]

We're also lucky enough to be housed on a reserve base. We have nearly the whole portion of the hangar to ourselves with two classrooms, two office suits, and bathrooms. We also have access to another hangar for PT when there's inclement weather and are able to use most base amenities.

[MacGruff]

We occupy a hanger plus office space in a General Aviation airport. Have two classrooms, five or six offices, two bathrooms, parking, and the hangar contains the plane and the pilot's office. With a squadron size of about 80 it's very adequate. Wouldn't mind an upgrade, but it's not really a problem.

[The14th]

The unit I am hoping to become a part of operates out of a Hanger on Randolph AFB.

[EMT-83]

Walkman, is the inconvenience of dealing with the dust for a few months too much?  If it's only going to be a month or two, I'd suggest dealing with it.

I agree with you that dealing with it in the short term is doable. I need to find another place to do at least PT in. We're also most likely going to do a Mitchell ceremony at the end of April (just needs to pass one most test next week), and I'd like to have a good space for that. Supposedly the drill hall area will be open again at the end of April, but I'm not counting on that until I see it. I'm looking for options so if we get in a pinch for space again, I'll have an idea where to look.

We're in a hangar at a municipal airport, with a classroom and several offices. A few years ago, one of the FBOs burned down and they moved into our building for 18 months. We were shoehorned into one office and some common space. It was tight, but we got through it okay. Having a couple of Citations and a King Air in the hangar was pretty cool though.

[C/Awesomenesss]

We have almost a whole building on Offutt AFB. It gets tight when most of our cadets come (about 100 to 110) to a meeting. Its nice though. We have a admin office, a ops room (with about ten radios), a conference room, the commanders office, and the aerospace room with flight sims.

[Devil Doc]

We Have an Hanger at the Local Airport. We Own the Hanger, Just not the Land Has an Bathroom, Shower and an small office in the top of the hanger. The office serves as the Records Room, Base Operations and Testing Room. The hanger is nice, but we dont have any rooms to seprate the Cadets and Senior Members, so it can get noisy. Its cool to open the Hanger doors in the summer and do drill and training on the Flightline/Taxi Way.

[Huey Driver]

We Have an hangar at the Local Airport. We Own the hangar, Just not the Land Has an Bathroom, Shower and an small office in the top of the hangar. The office serves as the Records Room, Base Operations and Testing Room. The hangar is nice, but we dont have any rooms to seprate the Cadets and Senior Members, so it can get noisy. Its cool to open the hangar doors in the summer and do drill and training on the Flightline/Taxi Way.

FTFY 

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

We are really lucky.  We have exclusive use of the original Oakland Airport Hotel and Terminal. An over 7,000 sqft, two story building with both Street and Airfield access.

We have three classrooms, numerous offices, a giant floor to ceiling view of the airport, and an office for the Commander (me)

We just moved our hangar from a dedicated hangar to one shared with a C-41A (DC-3).

The building was the first Airport Hotel in the U.S., and Amelia Earhat stayed here.

[RickRutledge]

 My first command position was in this building. The unit had been there since 1972 and the city did quite a bit throughout the years to keep it occupy-able. They put together a plan for a grant to build a new facility, but they didn't end up with the grant monies. Some of my vision on what to do with the building in the year I was in command didn't come to pass due to time, but I know the group that has their hands on it now will see some of that stuff through.

- Classroom (where cadets met)
- Main office room (where seniors met)
- Supply closet (bigger than my walk in closet at home)
- Comm room (with two VHF towers out back)
- Admin room (served as lobby for supply and comm)
- Fully equipped kitchen ( although the cabinets and appliances were garbage and not usable)
- Two bathrooms with full shower facilities
- Parking Lot

Couldn't ask for more and we honestly didn't want to maintain much more.

[RickRutledge]

My current unit is working on obtaining this from the city:

 The city built a brand new station and tripled the capacity about two miles away and just recently completed the renovations to the former "armed forces reserve center" that was converted to the Emergency Operations HQ where Police, Fire and EMS are now based. SO, they won't have much use for this building, its zoned municipal and the lot is on a corner and surrounded on the back side so there isn't any room to expand the property. We've offered to keep it maintained under a $1/year lease good for 10 years. The city is currently pondering the possibility and we should know in the next three or four months if we're going to be allowed to move in. *cross your fingers*

We're currently meeting in the portable classroom building of a local christian school. Which is great for meetings, but we lack any of our own space. Everything we use is shared, including our files and supply room. We have zero access to the building off meeting nights, so we're carrying a $75/month note on a storage unit for our ES gear. It's kind of painful and was meant to be short term as we met in the old reserve center before the city came in and told us we had to go because they were going to need 100% of the space and construction was to begin immediately, more than two years ago. Our attempts to get into the local national guard armory have been for not because they lack "proper heating and AC" for our "needs." Plus the building's downstairs has been welded shut due to lead. They used the basement as a shooting range. *bang head against wall*

[Eclipse]

That would be a sweet building - what kind of annual operating costs do you forsee?

[RickRutledge]

Minimal. The facility I posted earlier cost us less than $500/year to operate. Even after having a couple of SAREXs based out of it. There are some disciplined practices we'll have to keep in mind, but for the most part it's a minimal expense when you're there less than 6 or 7 times a month. We're hoping the city will agree to keep up some level of structural maintenance, to an extent, but there's not much that needs to be done.

[Garibaldi]

My current unit is working on obtaining this from the city:

 The city built a brand new station and tripled the capacity about two miles away and just recently completed the renovations to the former "armed forces reserve center" that was converted to the Emergency Operations HQ where Police, Fire and EMS are now based. SO, they won't have much use for this building, its zoned municipal and the lot is on a corner and surrounded on the back side so there isn't any room to expand the property. We've offered to keep it maintained under a $1/year lease good for 10 years. The city is currently pondering the possibility and we should know in the next three or four months if we're going to be allowed to move in. *cross your fingers*

We're currently meeting in the portable classroom building of a local christian school. Which is great for meetings, but we lack any of our own space. Everything we use is shared, including our files and supply room. We have zero access to the building off meeting nights, so we're carrying a $75/month note on a storage unit for our ES gear. It's kind of painful and was meant to be short term as we met in the old reserve center before the city came in and told us we had to go because they were going to need 100% of the space and construction was to begin immediately, more than two years ago. Our attempts to get into the local national guard armory have been for not because they lack "proper heating and AC" for our "needs." Plus the building's downstairs has been welded shut due to lead. They used the basement as a shooting range. *bang head against wall*

Station 51, stand by for assignment.