"St. Louis Downtown Airport to Expand, Rehabilitate Taxiways"

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

St. Louis Downtown Airport to Expand, Rehabilitate Taxiways
The Belleville News-Democrat, Ill.


St. Louis Downtown Airport, located in Cahokia and Sauget, is seeing
improvements, and more are on the way.

The largest improvement project at the airport involving public money will
cost $4 million. It will go to rehabilitate and expand airport taxiways.

Airport Director Bob McDaniel said 80 percent of the funding will come from
the federal government, 10 percent from the state and 10 percent from
airport revenues. McDaniel said the taxiway project should be completed in
two years.

Other airport projects involving public funds are a $494,000 ramp expansion
and a $95,000 improvement of security fencing at the airport. In both cases,
80 percent of the funding is coming from the Illinois First program, and
airport revenues are covering the remaining costs, McDaniel said.

The airport management offices have moved out of the terminal and into a
building at 1680 Sauget Industrial Parkway. The building includes an area
for the airport to store snowplows and other heavy equipment, and five
garage bays that allow the machinery to be repaired indoors, something that
was not possible before. In addition, maintenance workers and equipment,
once scattered at eight different locations around the airport, now have
been consolidated at the building on Sauget Industrial Parkway.

"This is just a tremendous improvement for us," McDaniel said.

McDaniel said he expects airport revenue to increase $50,000 just from
moving the management offices out of the terminal and renting the vacant
spaces there and in the now vacant maintenance hangars.

The relocation of the management offices will allow Oliver's, the restaurant
in the terminal, to add a room for banquets and meetings. In addition, Ideal
Aviation will add a new terminal and customer reception center on the west
side of the airport. Helicopters Inc. is adding a 2,500-square-foot section
to its building, and Midcoast Aviation will expand its customer service
center into vacated terminal space.

In other airport news, the airport has been honored as the 2002 Reliever
Airport of the Year by the Illinois Division of Aeronautics. Winners are
chosen based on their work in airport maintenance, community support and
aviation promotion.


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