By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
Major projects and renovations are planned for Rosecrans Memorial Airport in St. Joseph, and those projects just got a major boost from the state budget signed into law by Missouri Governor Mike Parson.
The budget, signed into law this past Friday, allocates $19 million to the airport - $10.2 million in state general revenue funds and $8.8 million in federal funding.
General manager of the airport, Julius Rice, says this money will help fund a new air control tower.
"What this is does, it'll completely fund the air traffic control tower portion of that aviation complex project," Rice said. "We already started the process of the terminal. That went through the city council a few months back."
"We're so grateful for what we got from the general revenue and that'll get us across the line and we should have the terminal and the tower both, hopefully, under construction at the same time out here, getting this aviation complex complete within the next few years."
Work has already begun on a new runway at Rosecrans, and construction is set to begin on a new terminal building in a few months.
Rice says he's hopeful that construction on the new air control tower will begin in spring of 2024. The current terminal building and tower were built in the 1950s.
The city is also hoping to build a new maintenance shed at Rosecrans to house snow removal equipment.
Rice is hopeful that there'll be enough money left over to build that shed.
"We're waiting to see how much the tower comes in at before we can pull the trigger on the snow removal equipment building as well," he said. "That'll get all of the airport operational maintenance equipment under one roof. It'll all be inside, enclosed and the return on investment on that is all of our equipment is going to last longer."
The 139th Airlift Wing is also in the process of moving its headquarters from the south side of Rosecrans to the north side.
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