Marksville Airport receives $177,000 grant to build 10 new hangars

    Local aviators will soon have new hangars for their planes at the Marksville Municipal Airport.

  The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded the Avoyelles Airport Authority a $117,000 grant to construct 10 new hangars. The airport will have to demolish and/or replace 10 of the old hangars because some of them are too close to the runway, Airport Authority Chairman Rene Borrel said. The Airport Authority discussed several options for the future use of the old hangar material at its Sept. 21 meeting.

   “The plan is that we build the new hangars a safe distance from the runway, dis-assemble the old ones and re-assemble them on the opposite side of the runway an appropriate distance from the runway,” Borrel said.

 

    There are three ways that could be achieved. The authority has not decided which one to pursue.

    The board was told at the meeting that it has the legal right to borrow money for airport improvements.

    “That means the Airport Authority could pay to de-construct the hangars and re-assemble them and charge rent to raise the revenue to pay off the debt for the project.

    A variation on that theme is to “issue a change order to the contract to build the new hangars, include the disassembly and reassembly and see what that would cost,” Borrel said.

   A third option is to advertise for bids for someone “to buy the old hangar material from the Airport Authority, rebuild the hangars in the appropriate area, enter into a lease agreement with the Airport Authority to operate at the airport and then rent hangar space to customers,” Borrel said.

    Borrel said a private entity cannot own property at the airport, so the business could not own the hangars.

   “It would probably be something like a 20-year lease agreement, and it could be a lease at zero dollars a year, but at the end of the lease period the hangars would revert to Airport Authority control.”

    Glendon Normand Construction of Marksville has been awarded the contract to build the new hangars. That project is expected to begin in October.

 

    The U.S. DOT recently approved $39.5 million in grants to seven other Louisiana airports. 

    The largest is $19 million for an apron at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International in Kenner. The smallest was $76,500 for the Jennings Airport.

   Other grants include $13 million for runway safety area improvements and $2.2 million for noise mitigation at Lafayette Regional Airport; $3.8 million for Hammond Northshore Regional; $539,800 to remove obstructions at George R. Carr Memorial Airfield in Bogalusa; $430,700 for Baton Rouge Metropolitan; and $90,000 to widen the taxiway at Acadiana Regional Airport.