Freeman Municipal Airport in Seymour has two active asphalt-paved runways.
Courtesy of BF&S
Projects will take off this year and continue into next year at Freeman Municipal Airport in Seymour.
During a recent Seymour Municipal Airport Authority meeting, Katie England, a capital planner for aviation for Butler, Fairman & Seufert Inc., gave updates on the Runway 14/32 pavement rehabilitation project and a new hangar.
The runway is one of two asphalt-paved runways at the airport.
Airport Manager Colin Smith said there aren’t any issues with the 5,580-foot runway that exceed against safety, but based on the pavement condition index that’s conducted through research databases, it is regulated by law to have upkeep within the runways, taxiways, aprons, etc.
“We have seen the chart dip on our charts here at Freeman Municipal Airport,” Smith said. “In order to maintain complete safety regulation and remain in great standing with aeronautical travel, we will be completing this project.”
He said it’s adamant for the airport to conduct preventative maintenance throughout the year.
“This preventative maintenance would be including crack sealing, temperature readings on all sections of the concrete airfield layout, grooving and grinding down blowups (the lift/buckling of concrete causing pavement to tent upward off of subgrade layers), etc.,” Smith said. “The airport is well maintained throughout the entirety of the year per every year due to safety regulation and corrective actions taken.”
England said design for the runway is about 50% completed. She received unanimous approval from the airport board on a $16,038.28 invoice, which will be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration for reimbursement. The federal portion of the Airport Improvement Program grant is $14,434, while the state portion is $801.92, and the local 5% match is $802.36.
She also received approval to submit a letter to the FAA to roll $300,000 in Non-Priority Entitlement Block Grant Program funds for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 for the runway project to 2025.
Each year, the FAA requires the airport to submit a letter of intent on how it wants to use NPE funds. The program provides up to $150,000 annually from the AIP to the majority of other-than-primary airports in the country for airport improvement projects.
England said there will be another $150,000 next year, so the airport will have $450,000 to put toward the project with the rest of it coming from discretionary fund sources.
The estimated total cost of the project is $3.2 million. England said that’s updated each year in the airport’s capital improvement plan, and massive inflation a couple of years ago caused cost estimates to go up.
“That will be something that you’ll want to include in your budget for 2025, and we’ll update the process as the design plans get to 100%,” she told the airport board.
In March 2023, England told the board the FAA and Indiana Department of Transportation pushed construction out to 2024. Even though the airport received the design grant, it didn’t have all of the money needed for the project, and since that was over $150,000, it had to be pushed off a year.
Now that it has been pushed to 2025, she said the plans will be drawn and the project will be advertised, and the deadline for submitting that will be June.
“A year from now, you’ll have a much firmer cost estimate, but we’ll make sure you’ve got that number for your 2025 budget for planning purposes,” she told the board.
In 2020, the airport’s other paved runway, 5/23, was extended to 6,001 feet, drawing more corporate aviation and military operations.
To support the uptick in activity at the airport, a new hangar is needed.
An eight-bay T-hangar would accommodate single- and twin-engine aircraft and large corporate jets in a safe, secure space and also help with the smaller aircraft currently on a waiting list for hangar space, airport officials told the Seymour Redevelopment Commission during an April 2023 meeting.
The new hangar is expected to cost $1.4 million. The airport was approved for a $730,000 Airport Infrastructure Grant through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and $250,000 in airport cash on hand will go toward the project.
That leaves $423,970, and the redevelopment commission approved providing that funding and also an interest-free bridge loan that will help until BIL funding is received for the next couple of years. The funds are available from fiscal year 2022 to 2026.
England said the project was advertised twice in January, and Smith and BF&S both have received calls from interested contractors.
An optional prebid meeting for contractors with questions was Thursday. Bids are due Feb. 15, and those will be opened and analyzed before a recommendation will be given at the next airport board meeting Feb. 19.
“The BIL funds obviously have increased the funds available, which means there are more projects,” England said. “This is a good time because contractors, especially vertical construction with buildings, they are just starting to put together their plans for the year. We’re hoping for costs to keep coming down the way they’ve been. Fingers crossed on that.”
She said the airport has $445,383.33 in BIL funds available.
“Once the bids come in for the T-hangar, if Seymour decides to make an award, we will submit a grant application for that entire amount, and we should get reimbursement pretty quickly once you start paying the contractor for the work,” she said. “Then you’ll have two more years of BIL funding to reimburse that.”
Authority President Brian Thompson said airport officials will be in touch with the redevelopment commission for part of the rest of the funding.
Barring supply chain issues, Smith said construction of the hangar should take six to nine months. Thompson expects the new hangar to bring in between $25,000 and $30,000 per year.
In the future, one or two more hangars could be added at the airport. Thompson said the next step would be a corporate hangar.
Other upcoming projects at the airport include new lighting on Runway 14/32 in 2026 and terminal apron reconstruction from 2027 to 2029. Smith said traditional federal funding sources will be used for those projects.
With Administrative Assistant Victoria Taylor reporting “a great year” in 2023 with income exceeding expenditures by more than $163,000 and doubling from the previous year, the airport authority is positive about the future.
“The airport employees get a lot of credit for that. You don’t find many government agencies that actually come in under budget,” Vice President Scott Davis said.
“That gives us a lot of leverage for the future is what that does,” Thompson said. “We talked about a fuel truck. That gives us leverage for the next hangar. That gets us where we need to be to grow.”
Thompson said the airport doesn’t receive any funding from tax dollars. Nearly 45% of the annual operational budget comes from industry lease, while around 45% comes from agriculture lease, and 10% comes from hangar rental and fuel sales.