Greenlanders Buy U.S. Base for 15 Cents

Usually, 15 cents doesn’t buy much, but Greenland is getting a whole U.S. air base, including a hotel, apartments, a nightclub and a dairy.

For the equivalent of one Danish krone, the Greenlanders could hardly pass up Sondrestrom, which would cost $498 million to replace. Now they have to decide what to do with it.

For decades, the base was an outpost against attack across the North Pole from a Soviet Union that no longer exists.

“It’s a ghost town now,” said Louis Moller, driving his taxi down deserted, snow-covered Central Street. “I’m going back to Denmark to get in the unemployment line.”

Tom Christoffersen, union spokesman for the 275 Danes and Greenlanders whose civilian contracts will expire Oct. 1, said: “The end of the Cold War has its drawbacks.”

About half the civilians expect to lose their jobs when the base is turned over to Greenland. The rest will stay on, to maintain the buildings and operate services for the adjoining civilian airport.

After the transfer, the United States will be allowed access when needed. During the Gulf War, Sondrestrom served as a refueling station.

The 2.4-mile runway divides the military base from the commercial airport, called Kangerlussuaq. In the mountains around them, where musk oxen and reindeer roam, are five machine-gun bunkers built to repulse enemies who never came.

Since 1954, Kangerlussuaq has been Greenland’s main port of entry. Passengers transfer to smaller planes for flights to remote towns not served by roads.

Residents of the area want to turn the base into a tourist and convention center because of its location next to the airport. Some politicians dream of building an international airport near Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, 280 miles south.

There is no money for either.

“It costs the Air Force $26 million every year to run the base; we’ll have a much tighter budget,” said William Butler, 50, a retired Air Force colonel from Colorado Springs, Colo., who will manage the base for Greenland.

In the late 1950s, about 1,200 airmen lived at Sondrestrom, which covers 250 square miles on the western edge of the world’s largest island. Now, the complement is down to 11.

All non-military functions, including the control tower, dairy, fire station and restaurants, are run by local civilians.

“Thank God, there’s still an American cook at Big Al’s Pizza,” said Master Sgt. David Cox, 40, of Des Moines, Iowa. Cox spends some of his off-duty hours working as a doorman at what was the officers’ club and now is a public nightclub.

The housing complex, hotel and chapel will belong to Greenland. Even the kitchen appliances and most of the blue Dodge vans will be left behind.

“It’s too expensive to ship everything away,” said Maj. Thomas Holkeboer, 39, of Grand Rapids, Mich., deputy commander of the base.

During the Cold War, Sondrestrom supported radar stations across Greenland. Its own four radars were part of the Distant Early Warning network, known as the DEW Line, built from Alaska to Britain to detect any attack by aircraft or missiles across the top of the world.

Sondrestrom shut down its last radar in September, two months before the Soviet Union was dissolved. A radar system at the U.S. Air Force base in Thule, in northern Greenland, remains active.

The flat valley at the end of the 105-mile-long Sondrestrom fiord enjoys a stable climate, although it is 34 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

It is one of a chain of airfields the Allies built during World War II to enabled 20,000 short-range American aircraft to be refueled on trips across the North Atlantic.

A steel and wire-mat runway was replaced by asphalt during the Korean War so heavy tanker planes could take off and refuel B-52s in flight. There is little traffic now, but a C-141 transport occasionally passes through.