CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — Stacey Meyer and her family just moved into spanking new family quarters on this big helicopter base near Pyongtaek.
Meyer, married to an Army intelligence officer, is highly impressed with the amount of space and overall look of her apartment.
“I’m gonna tell everybody who’s coming to Camp Humphreys they’ll have great quarters,” she said.
Under sunny skies, the Army formally marked the opening of the new five-story, 52-apartment, three-elevator building in a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Lt. Gen. Charles H. Campbell, the 8th Army commander. The occasion also featured a 10-helicopter flyover.
The Army hopes to complete the three-building family housing area for officers and senior enlisted members by 2006. It’s the first Army-funded family housing project ever in South Korea, Campbell said.
The total project, which also calls for a two-level underground parking garage, will cost about $69 million, said Loren Chin, Army Corps of Engineers team leader for the Army’s Area III, a region of South Korea that takes in Camp Humphreys.
The first building contains 36 three-bedroom apartments, eight with four bedrooms, and eight with two bedrooms.
Each apartment is fully furnished and has a living room, family room, dining area, laundry and storage areas, and balconies. Amenities include dishwashers and other appliances, as well as cable TV and Internet service.
The new housing, Campbell told an audience of tenants and officials connected with the project “… is a significant statement today about the importance our Army places on its soldiers and their quality of life in Korea.
“Soldiers have told us they will come to Korea and stay — if they can bring their families,” Campbell said. “Well, we have heard this, and we are doing something about it.”
“These units represent the first step toward our goal of increasing the command sponsorship rate in Korea to 25 percent by the year 2010.”
Hyundai Construction Co. Ltd. built the new apartment house under contract with the Army. It cost about $23 million.
Construction is set to start in October or November on a second building. It’ll be eight stories, have 48 apartments, cost about $22 million and open in September 2005.
During the same period the Army will spend $7 million to build the underground parking garage, also set to open in 2005.
No start date is fixed for the third building, but the Army hopes to complete it in late 2006, said Helen C.G. Nurse, chief of the Army’s housing division for Area III. Like the second building, the third will be eight stories with 48 apartments, and will cost about $13 million.
The first building is open to “key billet officers” including majors, lieutenant colonels, command sergeants major and senior warrant officers.
The second and third buildings will be open to company grade officers — lieutenants and captains, and senior noncommissioned officers — those in paygrades E-7 through E-9, Nurse said.
Trena Mitchell moved in recently with her Army officer husband and their two young children, and she, like Meyer, is impressed.
“I love it,” Mitchell said. “It’s much bigger than when we lived on the economy. It’s really spacious. It’s like a home.”
