Work is ongoing at the site of the coming Conway Municipal Airport, which is on track to serve corporate and private airplane traffic in August 2014.
Blake Roberson, project manager from Garver LLC of North Little Rock, the engineer of the new airport, said contractors were building a runway embankment last week and would subsequently shape the dirt for the taxiway and plane parking area.
Paladino Construction of Conway and AG Hunt of Russellville were the contractors, doing about $5 million in drainage and grading work.
Garver is engineering the design, managing the construction and assisting the city of Conway in getting federal and state funding for the airport.
The total cost of the project should be about $30 million, said Jamie Gates, senior vice president of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce and Conway Development Corp.
The new airport will replace the existing municipal airport. The city plans to sell the current airport property for redevelopment.
The old airport opened in 1939 and sits on 151 acres off Sixth Street about one mile from Conway’s downtown. It has a runway that is hemmed in by an interstate and railroad, and it doesn’t have a buffer area for if “something unplanned happens,”Gates said, citing an incident in 2007 when a pilot overran the runway and hit a house. Two people died.
The new runway will be 5,500 feet long, or 700 feet longer than the existing airport’s runway, but will have even more usable runway space since it will be located on 400 acres at the southwest edge of town, surrounded by farmland rather than obstructions, Gates said.
“Safety is the first, second and third priority that’s driving this move,” Gates said. “We need a 21st century, safe airport to accommodate the traffic that we already have.”
City Engineer Ronnie Hall said the city should start accepting bids to pave the runway, the next phase of the project, in May for paving in August or September.