John Baer, a representative of Woolpert, an engineering and design firm used by the Henry County Board of Aviation Commissioners, recently sent board members an email in which he shared the good news.
“I’m happy to say that I can finally come to you with some great news!” Baer’s email states. “I got a call ... from Melanie (FAA) and Marty (INDOT) telling me that they were able to ‘find’ another $275,597 in federal money for our project this year. That, in addition to the Non-Primary Entitlement, brings us up to a total of $465,347 that we’ll be receiving from the FAA. Factoring in the Local share ($25,852.61) and the State share ($25,852.61) brings us to a grand total of $517,052.22 that we can use to kickoff the construction this year. I’ve still got to work some numbers with the bids that we received, but that should get us nearly half of the new runway graded, which is more than I honestly thought we would get done this year.”
The local aviation board has applied to the Federal Aviation Administration for a $1.4 million grant to help fund construction of a new 5,000-feet runway needed to accommodate small jets and large propeller-powered aircraft. The total cost of the project is projected at approximately $7 million. Local leaders have said the expansion will facilitate economic development efforts.
Ed Hill, who serves as secretary of the local Board of Aviation Commissioners, is pleased the requested funding is on its way.
“This is exciting,” he said. “We’re hopefully going to get most of the grading work done this year, and with next year’s funds we should be able to actually put pavement on the ground. We may not get it completely built next year, but at least we can get started on it. This kind of puts us back on track after being held up last year when they didn’t approve our funding request.”
Baer said his FAA and INDOT contacts have asked him to prepare a new grant application with the exact figure so they can process it through the FAA Regional Office in Chicago.
“They’ve already submitted the above amount to the Office of the Secretary of Transportation and have already received clearance to move forward, so now they just have to process the grant through the regional office and we should be good to go. ... Once I get the new application prepared, I’ll send it over to you all for review and then hopefully signature. The sooner we can get this in the sooner we’ll see the money and get construction going,” Baer continued.
The idea of a new runway has been discussed for the last several years. Hill credits a better working relationship between the two primary entities involved with moving the project forward.
“The good thing we have going for us now is that we have awesome cooperation between the city and the county. That’s the real key and I think is what’s allowing this to finally happen,” he said.
The New Castle-Henry County Municipal Airport is located on County Road 400 South, east of Ind. 103.
