The City of Kenai will leverage federal grants to complete roughly $25 million in maintenance and construction at the Kenai Municipal Airport next summer, though city officials said there will be no impact to airport service while construction is underway.
Only a couple of weeks after making a rare, truncated single reading process to meet a sharp turnaround to accept a grant of nearly $1.6 million from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Kenai City Council on Wednesday repeated the move to accept another grant — this time for nearly $22 million.
An ordinance introduced and enacted at the council’s Sept. 3 meeting says that the grant is for improvements to the airport runway, to runway lighting systems, and to the airport’s storm drains. A total of $21,745,449 will come from the FAA, with a required local match of $1.1 million from the city — which already has been appropriated for this use — making a total project cost of $22.9 million.
That project joins another approved by the council only last month when they accepted federal funding to drive a roughly $1.6 million project to repair the airport’s apron space, where airplanes are parked and stored.
Lee Frey, Kenai’s public works director, said during the meeting that the airport would see heavy construction up to seven days a week from sometime in May through part of October. Though that work would call for a complete shutdown of the airport’s main runway, Frey said there would be no expected interruptions of service at the airport because the airport’s taxiway will be temporarily reconfigured to serve as a runway while work is underway.
“It’s going to be a busy summer out there,” he said.
Henry Knackstedt, Kenai’s vice mayor, said that the city has done heavy work at the airport before without impacting people’s travel plans and repeated “the airport will not be closed.”
After unanimously enacting the ordinance to accept the grant funding, the council also approved a pair of resolutions by unanimous consent authorizing contracts with the FAA and with Anchorage-based QAP to complete the work. QAP will be paid more than $18 million for rehabilitation of the airport’s main runway. The FAA will be paid around $700,000 to rehabilitate the airport’s approach lighting system and runway alignment indicator lights. Frey said during the meeting that the FAA is the only organization allowed to complete the latter work.
A full recording of the meeting and the full text of the ordinance and resolutions can be found at kenai.city.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
