The City Council took steps Monday to move forward with a project that will see the construction of a 20,000-square-foot hangar, along with a concrete apron to connect with the recently constructed taxilanes, at the City-owned Bartlesville Municipal Airport.
The hangar will allow the airport to recruit an aircraft maintenance repair overhaul company to Bartlesville, and infrastructure improvements associated with the project will permit development adjacent to the facility for the next 10 to 15 years.
The $5 million project is funded through grants from the Oklahoma Department of Aerospace and Aeronautics and the Bartlesville Development Authority, which will provide the local share of the grant requirements.
The ODAA will provide 40 percent — about $2.4 million — of the required funds, with Bartlesville Development Authority providing the rest.
“This hangar is going to go a long way toward advancing our airport and Bartlesville as a community,” said Chris Batchelder, BDA vice president of Business Development. “We’re excited about what this is going to do, not only for our airport, but for Bartlesville as we recruit a new MRO company onto our field and continue to add hangars and commercial operations in the future.”
City staff have been working with the ODAA and Bartlesville Development Authority for some time on the development of a box hangar at Bartlesville Airport. Talks for the project began in 2022,
with several factors contributing to the feasibility of the project over the past few years. Batchelder said escalating prices at Tulsa Airport has resulted in several companies looking to relocate, and the success of Phoenix Rising, a local company that leases hangar space at Bartlesville Airport and services Falcon Aircraft, has been a huge indicator that Bartlesville would be able to recruit a major company to the area.
“These factors, along with the 40 percent grant funding from the State definitely made the conversation easier,” he said.
In addition to the hangar, another project will include improvements to Wiley Post Road to connect
the new facilities, as well as a water line extension and sewer lift station improvements. That project will be funded by the BDA via ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act of 2021) and PREP (ODAA’s Progressing Rural Economic Prosperity Fund) grant funds it has received for infrastructure improvements. A separate grant from ODAA, as well as a smaller portion from the FAA, provided funding for the taxilane extension project recently completed at the airport that made the hangar project possible.
“That project opened up a lot of space for new hangars at the airport and has made this project possible,” said Director of Engineering Micah Siemers.
Thanks to some creativity from the City’s airport consultant, Parkhill, the ODAA agreed to break the hangar project into two grants, Siemers said.
“This included a 40 percent grant for the work directly associated with the hangar and a separate 95 percent grant for improvements planned to the apron paving connected to the taxiway,” he said. “For this portion of the project, $383,000 of the $402,000 project will be provided by the
ODAA, providing a substantial savings to the BDA on their match.”
Siemers said design on the hangar has been completed. The council voted 5-0 to approve a construction contract with Koehn Construction Services for $5,011,059 during the Aug. 4 City Council meeting. Construction on the project could start as early as September of this year.
The BDA will lease the airport from the City for $1 per year to meet requirements of the grant. Funds obtained through the lease will go directly to the BDA for use on other development projects.