MCLB gets first new homes in more than 50 years

BARSTOW — Cape Gloucester splits the new and the old at Barstow’s Marine base. On the one side of the road, a piece of base history — 337 single-story housing units built in the early 1950s shortly after the base opened. On the other side of the road, a nearly finished look at the base’s future — 74 new homes complete with a park and community center.

The new homes, a collection of single- and two-story units, are not just any old new homes. They are the first new homes to be built at the base in 55 years, said Capt. Teddy Gilmore. Families at the base will start moving into the homes at the beginning of April, creating a lot of excitement among Marine Corps Logistics Base, Barstow, families either living in the outdated units or flung throughout Barstow.

“Now we got new housing, and everyone wants a new house,” Gilmore said.

Gunnery Sgt. Correy Bratton and his family will be some of the first people to move into the new homes. He is currently living across Cape Gloucester in one of the old homes and is excited to start dragging his belongings across the street. He said the new homes have more space, ranging between 1,200 and 1,600 square feet, and all have an attached garage, a big improvement from the detached garages in the old units. He is looking forward to having his own closet, not a luxury the old houses afford.

“It’s long awaited,” he said. “Everyone’s excited.”

The MCLB has been working to get the new houses for years. With the new houses built and families preparing to move in, the old homes are slated for demolition, Gilmore said. The base plans to use part of the old-home property as a dog park for the four-legged members of the community. The homes were built by Harper Construction, a contracting firm that provides housing for military installations across the country and were modeled after designs at the Twentynine Palms base, Gilmore said.

Standard in each home are certain energy conservation measures. Gilmore said that the government mandated the military installations cut energy usage and the MCLB decided to make a dent with their housing. The homes use desert-friendly, low-water landscaping, have UV tints to the windows and motion detectors in some rooms to avoid wasted light energy, Gilmore said.

Each home also comes standard with that new home smell, Gilmore said, a welcomed scent to any Marine moving across the street.

“It will be a better living environment,” he said, “and people are just going to be happier.”

Eventually, all Marines on the base with families will move into the units as they are finished, Gilmore said. In the military, a person’s rank, among other factors, determine how many square feet of housing the person receives.

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The cost of building homes at the MCLB

In the 55 years since the Marine Corps Logistics Base, Barstow last built new homes, the number of families living on base has gone down and the price of building has gone up.

In 1953, the base built 337 homes at a cost of $455,000, about $1,350 per home.

For this batch of new homes, the government approved a $25 million contract to built only 74 homes, a park, streets and a community center. That works out to about $337,838 per home.