United States Air Force Western Regional Operations Building

The United States Air Force Western Regional Operations Building is former United States Air Force facility located in Knob Hill, Colorado. Today, it functions as an office building in which the "Time Warner Cable customer service center…is the building’s largest tenant". The Cold War structure was leased by the military for several decades as a USAF military installation and headquarters of several Cold War military commands.

Planning
"The requirement for a BMEWS display facility brought consideration early in 1958 on a long-standing need for a new COC" (the NORAD Combat Operations Center was in the 1954 Ent AFB blockhouse.) Use of a leased building near the base was proposed in 1958 for the "interim BMEWS central display facility" with "ZI BMEWS equipment" to be able to process observations by the date set for operational capability of Clear Air Force Station. (The Denver Super Combat Center's bunker was cancelled in 1960, and the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker was not started until 1961.)


 * Anti-ICBM control center planning: On March 18, 1959, the USAF told the BMEWS Project Office to proceed with the interim facility, and another location option for an "AICBM control center" with an anti-ICBM C3 computer (e.g., when the USAF Wizard and/or Nike Zeus ABMs became operational) was to use the basement of the 1954 blockhouse. A "satellite prediction computer" could be added to the missile warning center if "the hardened COC [at Cheyenne Mtn] slipped considerably beyond January 1962".  Instead, a BMEWS display facility with "austere and economical construction with minimum equipment" was planned in an "annex to the current COC building" at Ent AFB by September 1960.  Ent's Federal Building was a computer facility completed c. 1960, and the SPADATS operation center began in July 1961 at building P4's annex  (the Space Defense Center at Cheyenne Mountain became fully operational on February 6, 1967.)

Construction
The plan to use an off-base leased facility was instead implemented for the Combined Operations Center when the Cheyenne Mountain Complex was delayed and an earlier Semi-Automatic Ground Environment command post was needed as an interim Air Defense Operations Center for combining NORAD's attack warning and CONAD's weapons direction missions.

The 1962-3 quadragon was constructed for more than US$2.6 million by pouring >7000 cuyd of concrete and tilting 68 prefabricated reinforced concrete slabs 24 x, seven inches thick, and 33-ton mass to form 2 floors (one underground) of 3.5 acre each. A total of 2950 ft corridors (east-west "runways", north-south "taxiways") subdivided areas including a 174-seat auditorium, six conference rooms, and the war room. Offices were formed with more than 2 1/2 miles of movable wall partitions and 722 doors, and 17 office locations around Colorado Springs (1.5 million pounds transported) were consolidated Thursday p.m.-Monday a.m. into the building e.g., the Corps of Engineers office (overseeing Cheyenne Mountain construction) in the prefabricated building across Bijou Street.

Combined Operation Center
The Chidlaw Building's "Combined Operations Center" moved ½ mi (¾ km) from the Ent AFB combat center. The COC included a "war room", an IBM 1410 computer in 1965 for systems analysis, and air defense consoles presenting data from various Air Divisions (e.g., for the Goose Air Defense Sector in Canada). Systems which transmitted data to the building included IBM AN/FSQ-8 Combat Control Centrals at SAGE Combat Centers which "forwarded the divisional air defense status to" NORAD.

As the highest echelon of command and control for the SAGE Defense System, the Chidlaw Building was the primary node of NORAD's Alert Network Number 1. The network was to warn military installations with low rate teletype data (e.g., SAC Emergency War Order Traffic that included "Positive Control/Noah's Ark instructions" through northern NORAD radio sites to confirm or recall SAC bombers if "SAC decided to launch the alert force before receiving an execution order from the JCS".) NORAD/ADC operations transferred to Cheyenne Mountain on April 20, 1966 (until the 2006 Cheyenne Mountain Realignment when operations transferred to the Peterson Air Force Base NORAD/NORTHCOM command center).

Command headquarters
In addition to the Combined Operations Center, the Chidlaw Building housed the headquarters for several military commands:
 * North American Aerospace Defense Command: NORAD headquarters moved to the Chidlaw Building on February 15, 1963.


 * Continental Air Defense Command: CONAD and NORAD offices were consolidated on March 7, 1963; and CONAD was disestablished on June 30, 1975.


 * USAF Aerospace Defense Command: On July 1, 1975, "Headquarters ADCOM" was established at the Chidlaw Building when Ent Air Force Base was closing.


 * Air Defense, Tactical Air Command: On 21 September 1979, the ADTAC headquarters of MGen Piotrowski was established at the Chidlaw Building.  ADTAC received Aerospace Defense Command's "atmospheric" assets (interceptors, bases, and SAGE radar stations) on October 1, 1979 (Strategic Air Command "assumed responsibility for missile warning and space surveillance systems").


 * Air Force Space Command: "Space Command" headquarters activated September 1, 1982, at the Chidlaw Building and moved in November 1987 to Peterson AFB's "Building 1" The Chidlaw Building had been the site of the January 1978 presentation to "a general-officer review group chaired by new SAC Commander in Chief General Richard H. Ellis and ADCOM Commander General Hill" formally advocating formation of Space Command.


 * United States Space Command: "During December 1987, 2500 USSPACECOM and AFSPACECOM personnel relocated to their new Headquarters on Peterson AFB [Bldg 1470 (Ent Building) for USSPACECOM] from the Chidlaw Building".

During military withdrawal from the building, paintings were rescued and the chair used by President Kennedy (who received a Cheyenne Mountain briefing on June 5, 1963) was removed to the Peterson Air and Space Museum.

Office building
Several million dollars were spent in 1992 to gut the building, make numerous improvements and turn it into office space. Lars Akerberg purchased the building in 1993, and Premiere Conferencing became its largest tenant. The building went under foreclosure in early 2012 with a roughly 55% vacancy after Premier Conferencing moved out a year earlier.