Lt. Gov. Jari Askins speaks with Maj. General Myles L. Deering and Maj. General Bruce Casella after a groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday on the site that will be home to the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Muskogee. Photo Credit: MIKE SIMONS/Tulsa World

MUSKOGEE — Officials broke ground Tuesday on a new Armed Forces Reserve Center in Muskogee.The $23 million center is part of a restructuring effort that will house training facilities for hundreds of Oklahoma Army National Guard members and Army Reserve Soldiers in northeast Oklahoma.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen finer soldiers than I do today,” said Maj. Gen. Myles L. Deering, Adjutant General of Oklahoma. “They deserve the best training facilities.”

It will be one of seven such facilities, when construction throughout the state is complete, which is being touted as one of the most ambitious construction efforts the Guard has undertaken since the Works Progress Administration’s armories of the 1930s.

The 91,000-square-foot facility in Muskogee will be located at 6800 S. State Highway 64 on land within the city’s Davis Field Airport.

Lt. Col. Mark W. Clifton of the Oklahoma Army National Guard, said the new training facilities are part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission effort.

Reserve Centers in Norman and west Oklahoma City are under way. A Broken Arrow facility starts construction in October 2010, and work will begin soon on new centers in Ft. Sill, Vance Air Force Base and McAlester Army Ammunition Depot.

Lt. Gov. Jari Askins said that combining Army Guard and Reserves forces in a new facility sends a message of opportunity.

“I have a great deal of confidence that we’ll continue to attract the best men and women of Oklahoma,” Askins said.

Askins also noted that construction has an economic benefit to the area.

John Brendel, project director for the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Haskell Company, said the Guard implemented a “Buy Oklahoma” clause which requires employment of Oklahoma businesses for 75 percent of the services or materials involved in the construction.

A few of those Oklahoma businesses involved are Ross Construction, Hogle Contractors and Oil Capitol Electric.

Maj. Gen. Bruce Casella, commanding general of the 63rd Regional Support Command of the Army Reserve, said there is a $1.5 billion effort in the southwest to build new facilities as part of BRAC.

“Some of our facilities are old. We really need these desperately,” Casella said.

By SUSAN HYLTON World Staff Writer