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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