St. Clair officials are asking nearby airports to come up with improvement plans that could be funded from the sale of the St. Clair Regional Airport.
Wednesday afternoon, St. Clair Mayor Ron Blum and City Administrator Rich Childers along with Ron Price, of QED Airport & Aviation Consultants, met with representatives from three neighboring airports — Washington Regional Airport, Sullivan Regional Airport and Cuba Municipal Airport.
Representatives from Washington County Airport near Potosi were invited but none attended.
In August, St. Clair administrators met with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) representatives in Kansas City to plead their case as to why the St. Clair airport should be closed.
The FAA has charged St. Clair with showing how closing the airport would be beneficial.
The St. Clair airport is located off of Highway 47 in the Interstate 44 corridor on the north side of town.
St. Clair officials say closing the airport to make way for planned retail development would be beneficial because any federal funds potentially available to local airports could be used at airports in the vicinity.
“We are embarking on new ground here. It’s not a common occurrence,” Price said about the effort to close an airport.
“It’s a challenge for smaller municipalities to expand or make their airport attractive,” Price said of St. Clair’s airport, adding, “the competition is there, so we want to help airports in the region grow.
“We really believe this is going to happen. There’s a very good chance,” Price said of the St. Clair airport closing.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Price asked representatives from nearby airports to come up with a plan on how the money from the sale of the airport as well as the funds that St. Clair has to repay the FAA can be redistributed in the region.
“We want proposals from the four airports and ideas of what you want to do, what you want to build, a time frame for the project, engineering and design fees, layouts, sketches and costs,” Price said.
Proposals from the four airports are due to St. Clair by Friday, Nov. 11.
While Price said the FAA could decide to use the funds St. Clair pays back for any airport around the country, “at the moment, our thinking is to keep it local. It’s up to St. Clair how this money should be redistributed and we have to convince the FAA to go along with it.”
Price said if the grant money is redistributed to neighboring airports, it could fund 95-100 percent of their proposed improvement projects.
Among the projects Price said he believes would be eligible for the money are hangars, pavement improvements, rehab work on taxilane lights, repainting lines on runways and snow removal vehicles. “Think even small projects,” he said.
Price said the projects may be more likely to get funded if they are included in a community’s airport layout plan and are “shovel-ready.”
Childers said he estimates about $2.5 million would be available to be redistributed among the airports, but Blum said that amount may change depending on the final sale price of the airport land.
That amount includes an estimated $450,000 in grant obligations that St. Clair still has to pay back to the FAA.
Other officials who attended the Wednesday afternoon meeting were Jim Briggs, Brian Boehmer and Darren Lamb, all representing the city of Washington; Sullivan City Administrator J.T. Hardy along with Tim Peterson, Frank Little and Marshall Holtsclaw, all of the Sullivan Airport Board; Fred Goodwin, manager of the Cuba Municipal Airport; and Mark Anderson, Missouri Department of Transportation aviation division.
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