Over the past 12 months more than 800 Iowa National Guard soldiers have departed from Camp Dodge for overseas missions. When a major construction project is completed two years from now, those soldiers and the units that prepare them will have double the space in which to train and prepare for deployments.

Last week the Iowa Guard announced that it had awarded a $33.1 million construction project to Neumann Bros. Inc. of Des Moines. The largest component of the three-building project will be a new 173,000-square-foot Armed Forces Readiness Center, a “working armory” that will put training functions now spread among about 10 buildings on the base in Johnston under one roof.

“This new AFRC will house something like one in eight of our soldiers statewide, and more than half of our soldiers at Camp Dodge,” said Col. Scott Ayres, director of installations for the Iowa Army National Guard. The Iowa Army National Guard has approximately 7,700 soldiers at 44 locations statewide. More than 900 of the 1,700 soldiers stationed at Camp Dodge will be housed in the new building, he said.

“The Army runs off of authorizations,” Ayres said. “Every soldier is authorized so much square footage for storage; many are authorized office space. We are living with old authorizations from the 1950s; it’s really half of present authorizations. So it will be a doubling of square footage per soldier.”

Additionally, because the Iowa Guard is responsible for its recruiting efforts, the new structure will provide a key facility that’s on a par with the modern buildings high school and college students are accustomed to and improve its ability to attract new members, he said.

A second component of the project is a new 11,000-square-foot administration building that will house the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion Headquarters, which currently leases space at the Federal Building in downtown Des Moines. The unit provides administrative support and oversight to recruiters in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Additionally, a 27,000-square-foot building will replace the Military Entrance and Processing Station, which now occupies leased space in West Des Moines. The MEPS, which evaluates and processes people as they first enter the military, handles both active-duty military and Guard recruits.

The recruiting headquarters and MEPS buildings are expected to be completed first, by July 2007. Both will be located adjacent to the readiness center, which is scheduled for completion by October 2008.

Funding for the project will come entirely from federal funds, as authorized last year through the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission. The project is considered a realignment of functions at the base, said Michael Brothers, the Iowa Guard’s BRAC project manager.

“We’re basically going to realign the space vacated in these (10) buildings and use them for other critical purposes,” he said. “There will be a considerable amount of moving by units going into the new building. Then backfilling into the existing buildings will take place over time.”

The new one-story, V-shaped readiness center will be constructed directly northwest of the main entrance gate off of Northwest 70th Avenue, so it will be the first thing people see when they drive onto the base, he said. One of its most distinctive features will be a 70-foot tower that will rise from the center of the structure, which will be used to fold parachutes within the building.

The project was put out for bid based on design criteria completed by FEH Associates Inc. of Des Moines.

“Now, with Neumann Bros. on board as the selected firm, they have the responsibility to design and construct the facility,” Brothers said.