irmen and guardians—space and cyberspace enlisted personnel—will soon have a new place to lay their heads at Clear Space Force Station, located in Anderson, about 75 miles southwest of Fairbanks.

Air Force Civil Engineer Center, in partnership with Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center’s Detachment 2 and the US Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District, awarded a $67.6 million contract to UNIT COMPANY to build an eighty-four-room, state-of-the-art dormitory at the base, which serves as a Space Force radar station and provides space surveillance data to the US Space Force.

The 39,500-square-foot, three-story dormitory will include a mixture of one-bedroom and studio apartments, primarily for enlisted personnel, as well as a number of day rooms and multi-use spaces. The building will be built on a reinforced concrete foundation with slab on grade, and it will feature reinforced concrete masonry walls with exterior insulation and finish and a standing-seam metal roof.

The facility will also include an enclosed severe-weather passageway that connects to the main building system.

“It stays cold in Interior Alaska for a really long time; in February, it was -45°F there,” says Captain Charles Bierwirth, project manager for the US Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District. “Everything at Clear is connected by corridors to keep people out of the cold.”

Project Manager Trent Larson says UNIT COMPANY is also creating a new softball field at the base to replace an existing field that is slated for other uses. A second project includes a substation upgrade and redundant primary feeder.

“The scope of that project doesn’t have anything to do with the dormitory; instead, it’s to upgrade base redundancy,” says Larson. “The military always likes to have redundant services in case something stops working so that they are able to maintain operations.”

Anchorage-based Electric Power Systems is in charge of the substation design, and Wasilla-based Electric Power Constructors will build the substation. The overall contract for the dormitory project is $54 million; $12 million is slated for the design and construction of the substation and feeder portion. Construction is expected to be completed in December 2025.

Photo provided by UNIT COMPANY.

“There was a lot of back and forth with Clear Space Force leadership and the designers; this is where the guardians and airmen are going to live, and the finishings and interior design need to ensure that they have pleasant living quarters,” says Bierwirth. “They are permanently stationed here for twelve months on unaccompanied rotation, and this will be their home for those twelve months.”

According to Larson, UNIT COMPANY was able to start civil and foundation work with expedited design packages in 2023 in order to get a head start on the project before the final design was approved.

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The company did run into one hitch: having to relocate a leaking transformer, which required dealing with contaminated soil that delayed construction of the foundation until spring. UNIT COMPANY planned to remobilize in late March when the ground starts thawing, and the contractor expected to start excavating in early April for the foundation and deep under-slab utilities.

“We haven’t encountered any supply problems or logistics issues so far, and we don’t anticipate any because it’s a long enough construction project that we’ve been able to identify longer-lead items earlier on in the project in order to eventually fast-track approval of those items based on design considerations,” says Bierwirth.

Larson says it has also been difficult to find the people they need to complete the job and to find a place to house them.

“This area is stressed for housing,” he says. “And with the amount of work currently happening in Alaska, finding enough qualified people to do the job is difficult. We have had to reach out of state to meet our personnel needs.”

The company also built a $20 million fire station on site as a joint venture with Bethel Federal Services. The US Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District’s most recent project on the base was the construction of the LRDR facility, and the district is currently working on some smaller infrastructure projects and an ambulance bay as part of the medical clinic.