Cambria Air Force base has listed for $3.2M

From the height of the Cold War to dramatic police raids, this decommissioned military base has seen it all — and now it can be yours.

The Cambria Air Force base, perched high above Central California’s rocky coastline, recently listed for $3.2 million, SF Gate reported.

The Cold War landmark’s controversial history spans decades of legal disputes and strange happenings on the sprawling hilltop compound.

In keeping with the secret radar station’s mystique, the seller’s agent, Dick Keenan of Keller Williams Realty, has told the media he’s not authorized to comment on the sale. The public listing tells a story all its own, however.

The Cambria Air Force base, named from the beach town located a few miles south, was constructed for covert Cold War operations in the 1950s. Today the roughly 34-acre property sits largely vacant. Marketing materials feature 32 disused buildings, including radar towers, barracks, operations facilities and a neglected basketball court.

The base was decommissioned in the 1980s. It last sold in 2005 for $2 million to Hollywood producer Bernd Shaefers, known for the 1984 children’s classic, “The NeverEnding Story.” Legal documents place Shaefers in residence at the base since 2014, SF Gate reported. 

The property’s sole residential building offers five bedrooms across 2,092 square feet. Since the listing lacks interior photos, the kitchen’s granite countertops and double ovens cannot be confirmed. 

The sprawling lot boasts unbeatable views of the rocky Pacific shoreline, but it also comes with a troubled past. 

A multimillion-dollar asbestos problem was documented at the base in the early 2000s, resulting in a federal raid. A caretaker was prosecuted in 2011 for illegally dumping the carcinogenic material and Shaefers himself was hit with misdemeanor charges.

A separate raid on the property in 2006 remains shrouded in mystery — eyewitness reports told of a cadre of federal and local law enforcement officers storming the property in morning. Reasons for the raid were never made public, but one source told the New Times that officers were targeting a church that met at the base weekly. The small congregation reportedly cleaned the property on special “church work days.” Church members denied accusations that they were a cult.

Shaefer tried to give the property new life, first as a community resource center and later as a 25-tent glamping site — with a helipad. County planners nixed the glamping venture in 2018, citing fire safety concerns. 

Shaefers applied for bankruptcy in 2019, SF Gate reported, and petitioned unsuccessfully to keep his base prior to this most recent sale.

He attempted to sell the property at a higher $4.4 million in 2020, but found no takers. The listing agent from that time acknowledged significant issues with the property, the Los Angeles Daily News reported, and said that some but not all of the buildings had been remediated of asbestos. 

The 2020 listing reportedly advertised a bowling alley, an underground bunker, a mess hall and a greenhouse, as well as a “lucrative cell tower.”

Shaefers’ plans for the base were far from the most audacious. 

The prior owner, Richard Figueroa, teamed up with special effects producer George Vaile to link the base to China with fiber-optic cables. The partnership fell apart in a legal dispute, with one lawyer dubbing the saga “a bad Shakespeare play with too many King Richards.”

The future of Cambria Air Force base appears as fraught as its past — water levels in nearby Cambria have run low for decades. The listing offers a few ideas, however, including constructing a private compound, a hospitality retreat or a research campus.