If you belong to a unit (or know of one) that has built their own facility, I'd love to hear how the process went, including raising the funds. My unit is thinking about undertaking a project like this.
I'll take all the help I can get.
Thanks!
Murph
What kind of situation are you in? Do you already have land to build on - or are you looking to start completely from scratch?
There is definitely going to be some variation in process depending on where the starting point is...
I know the folks in Russleville Arkansas did it, darn nice facility (and Folks) too.
We likely will have land to build on as a part of a larger development.
If I recall correctly Kasler Senior Sqdn(IN069)http://glr.cap.gov/jccap/ (http://glr.cap.gov/jccap/) in INWG is building/have built a hanger.
I know of 7 squadrons who either built new or completely rebuilt facilities. 3 constructed hangers with the facility. All but 1 raised money from the members of the unit with some outside benifactors pitching in. The other unit asked for governmental assistance in constructing their facility on the municipal airport. They got 75% of the funds needed from the state dept. of aviation. Most of the members in all the squadrons pitched in with construction effort. All units have strong and vital programs with good membership and retention numbers.
Good Luck with your efforts.
Gwinnett Composite Squadron (NE Atlanta) http://www.gawg.cap.gov/GA112/ (http://www.gawg.cap.gov/GA112/) raised funds and built their own very nice combined headquarters and hangar building. The property is leased from the local airport authority. There is a "hangar scrapbook" page on their website documenting the construction process.
Great Plains Bison out in Garden City, KS has their own facility, but it's a couple of portable classrooms donated by one of the members that have been renovated.
They are buildings and they are theirs.
I believe it was the Fox Cities Composite Squadron, WIWG that just built a new facility. Very nice from what I hear. Tedda would know, he's in that squadron.
Medford Composite squadron has an old WWII hangar that was donated, they built their walls/classrooms and storage/supply/comm rooms and cadet classrooms we have three levels, main, 2nd (cadet classroom/office and 3rd (attic/storage) . I don't know how they raised the money then to do it, I wasn't a member at the time.
We are definetely looking to expand though, we have more needs than we ever did before. Hopefully we can build another classroom sometime within the next 5 years we don't have enough room to do what we all need to do.