A Cold War-era bomb shelter in Florida has new owners. What's going on there?
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — An "iron curtain" has descended here. Residents near a Cold War-era nuclear bomb shelter are wondering what the property's new owners are doing on the other side of the chain-link fence topped by barbed wire.
The bomb shelter and surrounding 5.85 acres were sold July 12 to South Rock Road LLC for $899,000.
According to neighbor Marty Rhoat, speculation about the bunker has grown in the surrounding rural community along Rock Road.
“You used to be able to just walk in there,” said Rhoat, who lives just down the street.
She pointed to the gate facing the road, now affixed with a "No Trespassing" sign. She said she used to walk her dogs and ride her horses beside the monolithic mound of earth and concrete, a dome towering 40 feet. Even after the fence was erected years ago, she said, she often sees teenagers scaling the fence, unperturbed by the warning.
The bomb shelter was built in 1967 in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis that unfolded five years prior, widely considered by historians to be the closest humanity has come to full-scale nuclear war.
The bomb shelter was a joint effort of AT&T and the U.S. Department of Defense to protect the region's telecommunications network and personnel. It was a fortification built to withstand an atomic blast and ensure phones kept ringing even during and after an attack. Some of the telecommunication equipment was shielded by a Faraday cage, a metal meshwork designed to deflect a nuclear electromagnetic pulse that can fry electronics.
The facility had its own water supply and three jet turbine-powered electrical generators to keep five people alive and cool up to 30 days, according to records.
The last time she set foot in the facility was a decade ago, Rhoat said. Entering through the ironclad blast doors was like stepping into a time capsule, she recalled.
“I was shocked at the age of the equipment that was in it. It seemed liked it was ‘50s or ‘60s. You saw transformers and breakers and all the wiring and things like that,” she said.
Stepping inside a time capsule
The one-story, nearly-8,000-square-foot fortification is bulwarked by concrete walls 30 inches thick. The two exterior entrances have armored steel blast doors — one paired with a radiation decontamination shower. The dark, damp interior gives the shelter a mausoleum-esque aura.
Closing the nearly million-dollar sale was a career highlight for real estate broker Eric Reikenis.
“It was certainly an interesting assignment for me. How often do you get to sell a nuclear bunker?” he asked.
Throughout his 13-year career in real estate, it was like nothing he’d seen before. Items from that era were stored like archives in a museum: old typewriters; rusted, unopened cans of dehydrated meal rations; various radio equipment; and an archaic server room — "large cabinets with the blinking lights, like in 'Star Trek,'" Reikenis said.
Reikenis encountered graffiti strewn across the concrete when he visited the property. The ominous iconography displayed an upside-down cross, a slur written in Spanish and other edgy premonitions:
"Hail Satan," "He will come," "Demons!!!"
Reikenis was not superstitious, and neither were the new owners. When asked if the "demons" made it harder to sell the property, he responded, "Not at all."
TCPalm columnist Anthony Westbury visited the bomb shelter nearly a decade ago when it was previously on the market. He, too, spoke to a real estate agent who was likewise captivated by the bomb shelter.
"With its peeling paint, musty odor and mysterious atmosphere, the inky blackness surely will conjure up images of red telephones and Dr. Strangelove," Westbury wrote, describing the ambiance.
What's going on now?
Jennifer Conklin is the co-owner of South Rock Road LLC, the company that now owns the atomic bomb shelter. She said her business is still considering what to do with it.
“We’re still in the early stages," Conklin said. “We want to bring it back to its splendor.”
Ownership of the property has changed a few times since the bunker was first put on the market in 2013 and marketed on Zillow as "the ultimate man cave."
Previous real estate agents recommended converting the space to a garage for a classic car collection. The previous owners attempted to fashion the shelter into a Tier IV data center — the modern classification for the most secure, fault-tolerant systems — which wasn't far off from the shelter's intended purpose in the '60s.
The bunker was inspected by the county and approved for an electrical permit in 2012, according to the St. Lucie County Building Department. Its "electrical" distinction permitted the property to be used for commercial electrical service. There are no other permits associated with the property, according to the Building Department.
“There was no power when we walked in,” Conklin said. "We did a lot of work, and we have a lot of work to do.”
Regardless of the facility's new purpose, there is a collective sigh of relief among the residents of Rock Road that the bunker never has been used for its original intended purpose — surviving nuclear Armageddon — and hopefully never will be.
Jack Randall covers economy and real estate for TCPalm, part of the Paste BN Network. You can reach him at jack.randall@tcpalm.com.