By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A groundbreaking ceremony at St. Joseph's Rosecrans Memorial Airport Monday morning celebrated yet another improvement at the airport which is the base for the Air National Guard’s 139th Airlift Wing.
Airport Manager Julius Rice says the $17 million Air Traffic Control Tower will be a big boost for the airport and for the 139th Airlift Wing.
“This is tremendous for Rosecrans,” Rice tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “Getting a brand-new state-of-the-art facility obviously is great for the 139th and their mission here. It shows that the community is behind them. But also, it gives longevity to the airport.”
The new air traffic control tower comes on the heels of a huge construction project: a new main runway.
“A lot of pavement, a lot of work out there,” Rice say, noting the pavement had to support take-off and landings of the huge 139th C-130 cargo planes. “That was this last year. We just recently were wrapping up that project. We’ve got the terminal project going on, which is not a passenger terminal. It’s the airport offices and the restaurant, basically the public access areas of the facilities. That’s currently ongoing. That should be done this year. And then the air traffic controller will be a dedicated facility for the air traffic controllers.”
The new terminal is an $8 million project. Both the terminal and the tower are being built by E. L. Crawford of St. Joseph.
The 139th also is in the middle of a massive move from the flooding-vulnerable south end of Rosecrans to the north end.
139th Deputy Commander Col. Barrett Golden says the new, state-of-the-art air traffic control tower will be a huge upgrade from the 1950s-era tower now in use.
“We do lots of things like tactical assault landings,” Golden tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “We do blacked out landings where you have to turn the lights off on the runway. And the technology in that tower right now is not able to accommodate that.”
Golden says that forces the 139th to send personnel out to the runway and cover the lights, which he says is a safety hazard.
The new tower will be 35 feet higher, a big improvement, according to Golden.
“To actually be 35 feet higher is going to significantly improve their line-of-sight capacities to see incoming traffic and to manage aircraft in a traffic pattern,” according to Golden.
Other improvements are coming. The Missouri legislature included two big appropriations in the state budget passed this legislative session. An appropriation of $7 ½ million will go toward the planning, design, and construction of a new aircraft maintenance facility. The legislature also budgeted $4 million for a new fuel facility to be used by both civilian and military aircraft. Those appropriations in the budget have been sent to Gov. Mike Parson for his consideration.
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