Bunker Down

Susan Price-Root

03/01/2002

So you’ve acquired the quiver of trophy properties in London, New York, Jackson Hole and St. Bart’s, and the time-share jet for the commute, but do you have your own FUDS?

In these uncertain times, FUDS (Formerly Used Defense Sites) are just the thing for those “duck and cover” days when the minions of evil are intent on raining down hellfire and brimstone on your capitalist head. The FUDS are decommissioned missile silos that once housed nuclear warheads and are now being converted into residential properties that even Dr. No would say “yes” to. And with good help so hard to find, even in the best of times, you never have to do windows.

The Atlas-F, for example, is built to withstand a 20-megaton airburst a mile away, the perfect place to peacefully pass through the apocalypse while watching Dr. Strangelove on the big screen. All of the bases decommissioned after 1965 are being destroyed to conform to international treaty agreements, so the inventory is limited—making them valuable collectibles, as well. “They’re the castles of the 21st century,” says Ed Peden, who is the man to see if you want to buy one. (You can check out his inventory of about a dozen such sites at www.missilebases.com.) (Click image to enlarge)

Interest in these subterranean split-levels has soared since September 11. “I’ve had about four times the usual calls and e-mail since 9/11,” Peden says.

He lives in one himself—one of nine Atlas-E launch sites built in eastern Kansas in the 1950s—and has a line on these and others scattered throughout Texas, New York, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Who has been calling? “I heard from a worried New York mother, who said she needed to talk her husband into it and would get back to me, and a couple of document storage firms who thought it would be a good idea after seeing the confetti of documents at Ground Zero,” he says. “It’s becoming a rich man’s project now because it’s a hard asset. Some owners have pulled theirs off the market and others are asking more for their properties.” (Click image to enlarge)

In the past, prospective buyers have considered using the vast underground vaults for raising snails, for breeding parrots, as a coil spring factory, even as a laboratory rat farm. The Forest Service turned theirs into a toxic waste depot. Another serves as a classroom for Jackson Heights High School in Holton, Kan.

Peden is not the Dr. Evil clone you might expect to find leading lookie-loos on house tours of nuclear missile sites. He looks more Lennon than Lenin, like the self-described New Age peacenik that he is. He got into this in 1984 when he and his wife Dianna, both teachers in the Topeka school system, bought the site for $40,000 as a home for themselves and their two daughters. “I was a big fan of earth-over structures in the ’70s,” he explains, “but this was beyond any I could have imagined!” And at 18,000 square feet, there was room indoors for the kids’ trampoline.

Admittedly, there are decorating challenges inherent in Bunker Chic, one of which is that Home Depot doesn’t carry escape hatches. Peden initially had to paddle a canoe through his prospective home and then pump out the eight feet of water that had collected. (An entrepreneur in Shep, Texas, finessed his site by leaving a silo tube “as is” and opening a scuba school.) The Pedens, however, can do a very impressive garage sale: They just crank open their 47-ton, 20-foot-wide, 18-foot-high steel garage door, et voilà!

There is a certain Blade Runner Brutalism to the graffitied rebar concrete walls of these sites that makes an ideal setting for your more severe Prada, or a rave for 5,000 friends. “In fact, these spaces can look a lot like converted lofts,” he says. The Pedens, on the other hand, preferred a warm “homey” touch with an Afghan war rug woven with images of helicopters. They also have brass patio lanterns bracketing the front door. The entry hall is a 120-foot corrugated metal tunnel. The 1960s missile-base control panel in the foyer is the welcoming design statement. The 54-by-54-foot living room, which once served as a command post during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, now has a stage for family theatricals and plenty of room for the drum circles the Pedens and their friends enjoy. A trench used as a cooling bath for Atlas engines was converted into “a nice little wading pool for the girls.” Peden admits, “Some days my daughters, Ashley and Heather, would complain about living in a hole, but they had plenty of space for big parties.”

Of course, chacun à son goût. If you like more conventional cocooning comforts, you’ll feel right at home in the aboveground contemporary three-bedroom family cabin in the Adirondack Park in upstate New York that comes complete with a private airstrip, an attached hangar, and a 12,000-square-foot camouflaged “basement.” “People have no idea what is down there,” says a spokesman for Franwick Industries, which spent $1 million developing the property. “It just blows them away.” If you like cosmic jokes and don’t want to be blown away yourself, it’s worth the asking price of $2.3 million. There is, it should be noted, a status pecking order even in missile silos. “As fixer-uppers, the Atlas sites are potential castles while the Minuteman capsules are more like mobile homes,” advises Peden. (Click image to enlarge)
Another of his premier property offerings is a luxury Atlas-E base on 28 acres in Wamego, Kan., upgraded with a lavish quarter-million-dollar marble bathroom and hot tub. It has a rather intriguing history, too. It was configured as a world-class LSD factory to the tune of $2 million by drug lord Gordon Todd Skinner, who still retains ownership through the Wamego Trust.

Not surprisingly, some of these Cold War relics have a karmic legacy of modern crime and atomic age debris. “It’s strange to think that for four years men sat in our living room around the clock ready to blow up a Russian city,” Peden reflects. “Human history pivoted around these structures and their destructive capacity.” (Click image to enlarge)

Feeling a bit depressed after his first winter in a nuclear silo, Peden brought in a Lakota Sioux medicine woman and a shaman to guide friends in chanting, drumming and praying to rid the site of its bad juju. It worked, he says. “Our home used to house a four-megaton warhead. Now it’s been converted to a place of peace.”

Kemnal Manor Estate, Anthony D'Alton
Knight Frank, +44.207.591.8600. www.knightfrank.com

Ed Peden, 20th Century Castles, 785.256.6029, www.missilebases.com