Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties

Airport looks to build hangar

By TOM LAVENTURE

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Ironwood Township — As part of an upgrading goal the Gogebic-Iron County Airport Board on Monday said it would consider approving a new hangar at its next regular meeting.

In the airport manager’s report, Michael Harma said the new commercial carrier, Boutique Air, which takes over from Air Choice One on Aug. 1. Putting their two planes inside a heated hangar helps with liability, he said.

“Heating hangar space is limited at this point,” Harma said. “The airline plans to bring two airplanes here and we are not going to have enough space for both of them.”

The board was also looking to create an airport of the future that would be able to attract jet service. For 30 to 50 seat passenger jets a hangar would need to be 100-by-100-foot with a 25-foot door.

“We have one shot and we want to do it well,” Harma said. “We don’t want to come back say we should have done this or that.”

The hangar is part of the airport six-year building plan, he said. The project estimate is around $250,000 with an order going out now taking 10 to 12 weeks of production time and brought in on trucks with all work to be done by October.

The issue with building a hangar amongst the existing hangars presented issues ranging from moving and turning planes to snow removal to utilities, Harma said. Building at the operations building site allows for enough turnaround space for planes to get in and out of the hangar without difficulty and also preventing other planes having to move, he said.

The operations office will be built out of the back of the hangar or relocated, he said.

In other business, Harma said he will request the Gogebic County Roads Commission to conduct the chip seal of the airport parking lot. The county has performed the work in the past but if they cannot then the project will be put out for bid, he said.

The terminal parking lot will be closed for sealing and painting for six weeks. This will be the same time that the runway resurfacing will occur from June 1 through July 15.

“We want to do things when the timing is right,” Harma said.

Harma is also writing a grant to pay for updating the door locks during the terminal structure closure. The system in use since 2013 is no longer supported, he said.

 
 
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