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    1. Airports
    2. Airports & Municipalities

    Hillsdale Municipal Airport to Benefit From COVID-19 Funding

    May 6, 2020

    By Corey Murray

    Source Hillsdale Daily News, Mich. (TNS)

    HILLSDALE — The city of Hillsdale's municipal airport will benefit from COVID-19 funding through the Federal Aviation Administration.

    Airport Manager Ginger Moore announced Monday night the city's five-percent match to a $1 million grant in supplemental discretionary funding from the FAA for the airport's parallel taxiway phase II project will be covered in the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CARES) Act.

    CARES funding will also pay the city's five-percent match (nearly $30,000) on a second airport project to install a new fuel farm with larger tanks, Moore announced in April.

    The estimate for the taxiway project — to build a full length parallel taxiway — is $1.2 million, Moore said.

    The Michigan Department of Transportation is responsible for a five-percent match which equates to $60,000, Moore said.

    The CARES Act funding is anticipated to save the airport nearly $90,000 and were to be taken from an airport fund the city maintains for airport needs that are generated from fuel sales at the airport.

    The parallel taxiway is on the airport's layout plan, which is planned out in three segments.

    The first segment was completed in 2015.

    "This next segment will be from the run-up area of runway 28 and come down to the t-hangars," Moore said. "The third segment (in the future) will complete the entire taxiway. This will allow the smaller aircraft to taxi off of the runway."

    Moore said that taxiways are a safer option to separate ground traffic from airborne traffic.

    The airport has been approved to begin the design of the taxiway this year and construction will begin sometime in 2021, Moore said. Bids for the project will go out in the fall, Moore said.

    Once construction begins, completion will take a few months and it will not interfere with current airport operations.

    Work on the fuel farm project is anticipated to be completed by the fall.

    ———

    ©2020 Hillsdale Daily News, Mich.

    Visit Hillsdale Daily News, Mich. at www.hillsdale.net

    Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

    Josh Smith