By Diane Krieger Spivak, Post-Tribune staff writer
NORTH JUDSON — For Sale: Former U.S. Army Reserve Center. Won’t last long. Act now.
Lovely open location in small rural town. Family-friendly. Indoor shooting range can handily be converted to rec room. Camouflage room excellent for interrogating your teenager. Fenced-in yard great for pets. (Barbed wire easily removable, but perfect as is for roaming youngsters.) Comes with 50-foot flagpole, ideal for playing Pirates of the Caribbean.
While the preceding wasn’t exactly in the property description, the U.S. General Services Administration says possibilities for the former home of the U.S. Army, Battery A, 4th Battalion, 333D Field Artillery, 800 E. Crystal St., are pretty much as endless as the imagination.
Bottom line: If you can fork over the dough, they don’t care what you do with it as long as it meets town code.
The military is using the Internet to auction off the 3.64-acre training reserve center, which housed about 50 military personnel before it closed in 1993.
Bidders have to plunk down $20,000 in earnest money before bidding, which is taken in $5,000 increments.
The high bid just jumped to $35,000, according to the government’s online auction Web site at www.auctionrp.com.
That’s a steal, compared to the Janesville Social Security Building in Janesville, Wis., that’s so far snagged a $225,000 bid on the same Web site.
Not only that, but with the North Judson property you get three buildings for the price of one, a 10,379-square-foot red brick administrative building constructed in 1958, a 1,802-square-foot maintenance building and a 933-square-foot concrete block storage shed.
Plus, there’s a 50-foot concrete vehicle-repair ramp in the back yard that would make one heck of a Hot Wheels racetrack.
Members of English Lake Church, located out of town, toured the facility for a possible downtown location.
With the electricity off, peering into the 80-foot-or-so former firing range by flashlight was like looking down a really long tunnel. Fortunately no one heard a voice at the other end, calling, “Go to the light.”
But church officials did see potential in the extensive room as a classroom or senior room.
If they wind up with the property, pastor Rod Lawrence said, “We would probably keep our facility and do children’s programs here.”
The “turquoise room,” an existing classroom, complete with chalkboards and podium, was of particular interest to the English Lake bunch.
There’s also a vault in the building, great for keeping treasures, or for those sorely lacking in anything of value, smelly gym shoes.
According to Lisa Tangney, realty specialist for the General Services Administration, who handles disposal of no-longer-used government property in the Midwest and New England, the parcel is one of dozens that the government disposes of each year.
There’s a specific process that must be followed in finding new owners for government property, Tangney said.
First, it’s offered to any federal agencies. If there are no takers, it’s then offered through the Public Benefit Program to other government entities, like an old Coast Guard housing development in Hanna City, Ill., that the village purchased to redevelop into senior housing.
“We sold an army reserve center in Detroit, which was purchased under the Public Benefit Program to use for law enforcement,” Tangney said. “The Detroit Police Department used it as police training academy,” she said.
If the property still gets no takers it’s then offered for housing and urban development purposes.
Finally, it’s put up for sale to private parties.
At one point, the town of North Judson expressed an interest in possibly turning the reserve center into a community center, senior center, a community gym or municipal offices, Tangney said, but decided not to take the building.
So hurry, because bidding ends Tuesday. If there are no bids by 3 p.m. that day, bidding stops. If there are bids that day, bidding will continue each consecutive day that a bid is received, Tangney said.
Remember, one man’s Army Reserve Center is an in-home theater for another man’s big-screen TV.