After more than $100 million in investment and years of delay, the Hosmer Visitor Center outside the north gate of the Air Force Academy is almost ready to give the public a glimpse into the lives of cadets. 

From the moment cadets swear to uphold the academy’s honor code to picking an Air Force career, the visitor center, set to open May 16, floods the senses with the sights and sounds of life on base. 

“If you are a young person walking through here, I think you can see yourself as a cadet,” said Col. Candice Pipes, director of admissions, who hopes it may attract those who perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise considered a career in the military.

After walking through the doors, visitors can stand on red footprints and see themselves in a mirror while hearing the honor code and the oath of office — key words that cadets recite on their first day, and meant to guide their lives. Those standing on the footprints can take in the night sky of April 1, 1954, the day the academy was founded, said Michael Peterson, the academy’s outreach division chief. 

In the airy atrium, a glider previously used in training “soars above” spires inspired by the cadet chapel as sounds of celebrations at the academy play. 

At the top of a sweeping spiral staircase, visitors will be able to experience simulating parachute jumps, glider flights and an intense physical training course in theaters, but those are not open yet. They are expected to be completed in a year and a half, Peterson said.

The building is coming alive with a $21 million investment, he said, supported in part by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association and Foundation. The nonprofit raised $5 million to help finish the building as part of the $10 million it donated total, said Kelly Banet, executive vice president for development.

The spending on the building’s interior follows $90 million spent on the building and infrastructure financed by bonds sold by Blue and Silver Development Partners.

For 2nd Lt. Carlie Walters the visitor’s center is particularly realistic because it features so much video footage of her class, young officers who graduated last year. She appreciated the emphasis on people.

“The academy is a small place and you are going to be going through some tough stuff and those people are going to be able to help you out as you go through it,” she said.  

From the outside, the whole building is meant to capture the imagination and invoke a wing in flight.

The CEO of VisitCOS, Doug Price, is hopeful the iconic building will attract attention and encourage drivers traveling Interstate 25 to stop. As a state welcome center, it could also help them discover other attractions in the region. 

“That whole northern part of Colorado Springs and El Paso County has become a destination in and of itself,” he said. 

The new center is a needed tourism boost as high gas prices, airline fares and inflation generally are pushing travelers to rethink their plans. The city has already seen lodgers and auto rental tax collections fall about 6% during the first two months of the year, he said.  

The new center will replace a building that dates back to the 1980s and drew more visitors than any other man-made tourist venue in Colorado before the security measures for the base went into place following the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Those who envisioned the new center in 2013 wanted to get back to sky-high tourism numbers of 1 million people a year and pitched the city and state to pledge tax revenues to the project as part of the City for Champions initiative. The initiative also built the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum, the William J. Hybl Sports Medicine and Performance Center, Weidner Field and Robson Arena. 

The visitor center is the last City for Champions project to open and the $90 million in bonds will be paid back largely through the sales taxes generated by the new business activity around the center, such as the Hotel Polaris, said Jariah Walker, executive director of the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority. In addition to the hotel other commercial buildings are planned.

The state also pledged about $13 million in sales tax revenues to the project as part of the $120 million it pledged to all the City for Champion projects, Walker said.

The building was expected to be completed by about 2023, but the sale of the bonds for the building was delayed by the pandemic and the collapse of the bond market in March 2020. When the bonds were sold in 2022 the delay had increased the cost of the project by $40 million.

The building was supposed to be finished and turned over to the academy in 2024 to be filled with exhibits over six months, but that timeline was extended a few times. The original deadline was about 10 years after the projects were started in 2013. 

“We really have to give great credit to the state for continuously giving deadline extensions,” Price said. 

DETAILS

The center will open to the public May 16.

Admission is free, and it will be open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

More information can be found at usafa.edu/facilities/hosmer-visitor-center/