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Staff crafts projects plan |
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Thursday, 03 December 2009 |
By KAREN CAMPBELL
Assistant Managing Editor
As concrete work wraps up at the Neil Armstrong Airport outside of New Knoxville, the county airport’s manager says they are looking a decade into the future with a capital improvement plan.
Neil Armstrong Airport Manager Sean Stroh said apron work at the facility should be completed by next spring, once the weather warms up and joints can be resealed and cracks around edges repaired.
A couple areas of failed concrete already have been replaced through the project which was funded 95 percent through Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grants.
An exact total of those costs was not available, the airport manager said.
“The Airport Capital Improvement Plan is a long-term forecast of projects we are looking at during fiscal years 2011 through 2020,” Stroh said of the 10-year plan. “It gives us a chance to think about any capital improvement projects that we might want to look at, by looking at those continuously and revising the plan annually, it allows us to stay on the FAA’s funding radar and know where
we are headed.”
For fiscal year 2010, the airport is planning projects which include adding precision lighting to a runway as well as obstruction removal projects.
“That’s the next major project on the list and then we are very conservatively moving toward a new terminal and administration building,” Stroh said.
He said preliminary work on that project could begin as early as 2011, but then be spread out through 2015.
“Once we start, most likely it would be condensed into a shorter time frame, but we’re being conservative with our estimates at this time,” Stroh said.
He said without secured funding sources, they have not developed fully detailed plans at this time.
Stroh said they started preparing for the terminal building project three years ago with preliminary studies.
Planning for a runway extension project, which was completed in 2004, actually started in 1998.
He said typically once planning begins projects may take approximately five years before they are started or completed.
“Those are the main ones between now and 2015,” Stroh said of the planned projects. “Once we further start looking into the future, there will be other projects.”
He said those would include adding overlay to the runway as preventative maintenance to the asphalt and developing more T-hangers.
“Creating an Airport Capital Improvement Plan is a good tool for the long range process when we have to plan ahead to get funding for projects like this,” Stroh said.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 04 December 2009 )
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