The new airport hangar is taking shape at the Perry Municipal Airport, the latest in a long-term plan of improvements for the public facility.
The structure replaces what was the samllest and oldest hangar at the airport, built in 1950, which was demolished and hauled off in July as the first step toward construction of a new 100′ x 100′ hangar on the same spot.
The $815,000 contract for the new hangar was awarded in March by the Perry City Council to Fort Dodge-based Jensen Builders, which also was awarded in June the contract to demolish the old hangar.
In June the council also approved $42,000 in upgrades to the airport’s underground wiring system.
The big airport project now on the city’s radar is a $12 million plan to build a 4,000-foot replacement runway, with the hope of eventually extending the structure to 5,500 feet.
Bolton and Menk Inc. Project Engineer Matt Ferrier said replacement of the runway is long overdue because the original concrete strip “is deteriorating very quickly and becoming a safety issue for the facility, so we are moving as fast as we can with the FAA and getting funding as quickly as we can for it.”
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is covering 90 percent of the cost of the new runway, with the city of Perry’s 10 percent share amounting to about $1.2 million. In January the council approved the sale of $2.075 million in general obligation bonds to finance the airport improvements, both the new runway and the new hangar.
The FAA’s Airport Master Record shows average use of the Perry Municipal Airport at 13 operations a day, as of the year ending Oct. 5,2016, a per-day figure that has remained steady since at least 2007.
