Thursday, September 25, 2014

New hangar planned at Grimes Field Airport (I74), Urbana, Ohio

URBANA —   Grimes Field will get a new hangar and has recently received more than $62,300 from the U.S. Department of Transportation for taxiway repair.

The Urbana City Council passed the ground lease resolution for the new hangar unanimously Tuesday night. Friesian will develop the new hangar, which will be placed south of the airport’s main hangar.

The city will receive an annual fee of 25 cents per square foot from the lease. Urbana Director of Administration Kerry Brugger expects the lot being leased to be around 19,500 square feet, although the final square footage is still being finalized.

Construction is expected to begin soon and finish before the end of the year.

“We need all the hangars we can get,” Airport Manager Carol Hall said. “We need T-hangars badly, but anybody building a hangar helps because it sells fuel, it sells food in the restaurant. It helps everybody.”

The federal dollars the city recently received for taxiway work also covered the repairs of runway 02/20, which totaled nearly $180,000 and were done last year.

The Grimes Field airport participates in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program. The program provides grants to public and private companies for airport improvements, according to the FAA website.

The city receives money each year from the FAA for improvements, but the costs for the runway repairs exceeded that amount.

“We had some additional costs, additional crack repair and things we hadn’t anticipated as far as quantities when we did the runway, so the city fronted that money and this grant that we just received allowed the city the eligible reimbursement back on the work that’s essentially already been done and paid for,” said Doug Crabill, city community development manager.

Crabill said the repairs mainly consisted of repairing the pavement of the runway, to prevent redoing the entire asphalt in the future.

“Without receiving the federal dollars, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the projects we need to keep the airport in functional shape,” he said.

Urbana Mayor Bill Bean said the economic impact of the improvements should be significant.

“That’s going to mean more fuel, sales and hopefully more traffic coming into the airport,” he said.

Bean added that the city is slowly trying to improve the airport.

Brugger agreed that the city’s vision for growth is being realized.

“It’s happening,” he said. “We’re going to keep picking at it.”

- Source:  http://www.springfieldnewssun.com

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