Stillwater City Council will look at bids Monday to repair an airport hangar from damage received during an Aug. 8 windstorm.
STILLWATER, Okla. — Stillwater City Council will look at bids Monday to repair an airport hangar from damage received during an Aug. 8 windstorm.
The rock hangar at the Stillwater Regional Airport was built in 1936, prior to the construction of the modern day airport in the mid-1940s.
Named for its sandstone facade, the rock hangar had approximately 45 percent of its wooden roof ripped off in the storm. The storm also caused minor damage to a separate hangar and the Oklahoma State University Flight Center.
Airport Director Gary Johnson said after the storm he felt fortunate there wasn’t any significant damage to aircraft. He said the airport measured wind speeds during the storm ranging from 80 to 90 mph.
“That’s not nearly as (fast) as we’ve seen before in wind gusts, but it was prolonged for between five to eight minutes,” Johnson said.
That wind knocked out electrical lines to the hangar and sent parts of the roof into a nearby fence.
Johnson said there were three planes in the hangar at the time that didn’t receive damage despite being pushed around by wind. One of the planes was found resting on top of a pile of debris when airport staff inspected the hangar after the storm.
“I couldn’t see a scratch (on the plane),” Johnson said. “Just one of those two-by-fours would cause major damage.”
The rock hangar, like many older city-owned buildings, is covered by the Stillwater’s self-insurance program. City Manager Dan Galloway said Stillwater had reserves in that self-insurance fund to cover the repairs to the rock hangar and some other city property damaged in the storm, but money to replenish that fund would have to be built into future budgets.
Newer buildings such as the library, municipal building and the police department are covered by a third-party insurance policy.
City councilors will review bids on repair work to the rock hangar roof. The lowest bid for the roof repair is $46,350 from Stillwater-based Thunderbird Roofing and Construction. Additional repairs will be needed to metal side walls, but airport staff said it could do those repairs in house.
According to a report prepared for councilors, four tenants were leasing space in the hangar at the time of the storm. Those tenants were relocated after the hangar lost a large portion of its roof.
The report also states monthly rental fees for the four aircraft came to $468, and the hangar had space to store one additional small aircraft. There is a waiting list at the airport for group or individual aircraft hangar space.
City Council will meet at 5:30 p.m. in the Council Hearing Room of the Municipal Building, 723 S. Lewis St.
No comments:
Post a Comment