Subscriber exclusive — Cape council set to hire consultant for airport projects

The Cape Girardeau City Council will vote today on a measure to hire a consultant to perform planning work costing more than $472,000 as the first step toward construction of a new terminal and other major improvements to the city’s airport.

A Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) block grant will fund 95% of the $425,310 cost of a terminal area master plan study and updating of an airport layout plan. The city will pay the remainder of the cost, totaling $21,266.

In addition, the city will pay the entire cost of a $49,430 drainage study at the airport.

Cape Girardeau Regional Airport manager Bruce Loy said Tuesday the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has indicated the drainage study is not eligible for grant funding unless the city would develop an entire new airport master plan, which would be more expensive.

Loy said the drainage study is needed because the airport has a history of drainage issues, particularly on the south side of the airfield.

The consulting firm of Crawford, Murphy & Tilly will do the planning work. The firm, which has offices in several states, including Missouri, has been involved in previous improvement projects at the Cape Girardeau airport.

Loy said MoDOT and the FAA require the city to update the airport master plan and airport layout plan before the major improvement projects can commence.

The planning work, he said, will lay the groundwork for land acquisition, construction of a new terminal and new control tower, and general aviation facility improvements.

“You don’t want to locate a terminal without a study on where to put it and the same thing with the tower,” he said.

The study will focus on more than just an airport terminal. It will look at whether the fuel farm and maintenance building should be relocated and where a future fire station for the airport might be built.

“It all kind of goes together,” he said.

Loy said the contract with the consultant calls for the planning work to be completed within a year, but it could be completed within eight months.

In August, voters extended the city’s capital improvement sales tax for another 15 years.

Some of the tax revenue is earmarked for airport improvements.

Airport terminal and tower projects, along with land acquisition, is estimated to cost $6.8 million, with $4.25 million provided by the sales tax and another $2.55 million expected to come from FAA grants.

The existing terminal was built in the early 1960s.

“The passenger terminal was remodeled in 1992 and is now in need of a number of structural and cosmetic improvements,” Loy wrote in a report to the council.

“With the introduction of regional jet service to Chicago O’Hare airport in December of 2017, the terminal interior had to be remodeled in order to provide a larger passenger screening area and secured passenger holding area,” he added.

“With the success of this new service, we are rapidly running out of room and have a major need for terminal changes and updates. It was concluded that a new terminal made more financial sense,” he wrote.

Loy said the air traffic control tower has structural damage and is also located where controllers cannot see aircraft in blind spots caused by hangars that have been built over the past 20 years.

“Obviously, these problems resulted in the need to build a new tower at a new location,” he wrote.

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