Air Traffic Control Tower Up For Vote: Lakeland Linder Regional Airport (KLAL), Florida

LAKELAND | The on-and-off plans for a new $4.3 million air traffic control tower at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport are back on.

On Monday, Lakeland city commissioners will vote on whether to spend 20 percent of $579,000, or about $115,000, on the design phase of a new air traffic control tower. The remaining portion of the design will be funded by a Florida Department of Transportation grant.

Earlier this year, plans for construction of a new tower were put on hold while federal funding of the tower at Lakeland Linder was expected to stop to accommodate automatic spending cuts required by Congress.

That decision to stop funding has been delayed. Funding for the tower at Lakeland Linder is in the 2014 federal budget, but it's unclear whether the budget will pass.

Gene Conrad, airport director, said the tower will remain open regardless of whether federal funding stops in the future. Airport officials plan to use $250,000 to $300,000 of the airport's own money to keep the tower open if funding stops.

The FAA pays $500,000 a year to staff the tower at Lakeland Linder. The tower has seven workers from RVA Robinson Aviation, which contracts with the FAA at airports throughout the Southeast and Southwest.

"We think the federal government has an obligation to fund these," City Manager Doug Thomas said Friday during an agenda study meeting. "I don't think the airport would be safe without it."

Conrad said state officials don't want to wait any longer for the project to build a new tower. He said if the city were to turn down the funds, they would be used for another project in the state.

Conrad has said the current tower, built in 1981, will have line-of-sight issues when the runway is extended from 8,500 to 10,000 feet in coming years.

In addition, the tower is not up to FAA security standards, and the inside is cramped when 15 air traffic controllers work during the week of the Sun 'n Fun Fly-In.

The tower will be nearly three times the size of the current 50-foot tower. The new tower is expected to be located about 2,000 feet northwest of the current tower, which eventually will be demolished. Construction should begin in the summer of 2014, Conrad said.

Commissioners voted 6-0 in February to accept $3.4 million in funding from the Department of Transportation.

The City Commission meets in regular session at 9 a.m. Monday at City Hall, 228 S. Massachusetts Ave. There will be a budget hearing at 6 p.m.

Original Article:   http://www.theledger.com