Warsaw Municipal Airport Manager Nick King gives the Kosciusko County Commissioners an update Tuesday on the projects at the airport. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

KOSCIUSKO COUNTY — Because of the county’s contribution to the Warsaw Municipal Airport, a number of projects have been able to be completed or are in the process of being completed.Airport Manager Nick King gave the Kosciusko County Commissioners an update on them Tuesday, June 3.

“First off, I would like to thank you guys for your support,” he said. “… I would like to explain to you how instrumental your support of the airport has been and what it has allowed us to do.” He first went over the three projects that are currently covered under the memorandum of understanding between the airport and commissioners.

The AEP power line lowering project, as of April 24, is substantially complete. He said the power lines are back up and in operation. There is some warranty work that needs to take place later this fall, but the final bill will be paid at the next Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners meeting in June and that grant will be closed out at the end of the month. A federal grant is paying for 90% of the approximate $7.6 million project, with the state paying 5% and the remaining 5% local.

“To put that in perspective, had it gone until May 3, it would have taken 39 years to get that project across the finish line from when we first looked at doing that project. So we’re very excited about having that one behind us,” King stated.

On the Airport Overlay District, King said they’re in the final stages of preparation and editing on that. “We had a great meeting with the county planner, as well as the city planner. We are taking their notes,” he said. “We did not want to reinvent the wheel. We wanted this to integrate in their system as seamlessly and easily as possible, so once we had the draft — this is what we had to have to make the FAA and INDOT Aviation happy — how can we integrate this seamlessly into those two offices and departments and make it easy for them? They have copies of the AOD and we’re working on those finalizing documents.”

In the next couple months, King said they were hoping to have the AOD in front of all the boards that need to approve it. An AOD is a set of controls designed to increase the safety associated with aircraft and to ensure compliance with federal regulations. The AOD promotes compatible land use to protect approaches, airspace and physical surroundings to encourage development that is compatible with the safe operations of aircraft.King noted the AOD ultimately will be less restrictive on developers and actually will be a benefit to them as it will streamline the permitting process for tall structures.

On the third project — the self-serve fuel farm — King said they hit a snag with that. He received a quote last year in August so he could work on his budget for 2025. The quote was about $76,000. “We had some other internal work that we needed to do, running power and building a concrete pad. We built the pad and we were starting the conduit for the power,” he said.

This spring, once funded was secured, King reached back out to the company for an update on the quote. He was given a new quote of $178,000, an increase of over 250%. “And so, we’re obviously looking for a different vendor to see if we can bring those costs back down because that is way, way more than that should be. We weren’t really given a reason why they went up that much, but we talked to a few other vendors and we’re cautiously optimistic that we can bring that back within our original budget of about $100,000 to $125,000 to get that project across the board,” King explained.

He then gave the commissioners a little bit of a “history trip” so they could understand where their help with the projects last year and this year “have really propelled the airport.” In 2019, when the airport did its north-south runway rehabilitation project, King asked the engineers, with all the teams on site could the airport go ahead and pay them to do some additional work for projects that the airport knew was coming. “We didn’t know where that money was going to come from, but we knew that if we had that information, if somebody said, ‘hey, we have this funding available,’ we could get that project across the finish line. And so with you helping us on these three projects last year, it freed up about $175,000 in airport funding that we could use to engineer and design these projects,” King said.

That $175,000 wound up being covered by the grants the airport was able to receive.“It allowed us to receive $2,253,373 in grant funding that otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to do because we wouldn’t have had those shelf-ready projects,” King said. “So to put that in perspective, that $2.25 million wound up costing our local taxpayers about $12,669 at the end of the day once we were reimbursed by all of those grants.”

By doing those projects, he said that could “set us up for success in an additional grant to replace our north-south taxiway either this fall or next spring. That grant, we’re looking at about $3.2 to $3.3 million with a local share of $81,616. So total over two to three years, because of your help and your investment at the airport, we could be seeing locally about $5.5 million with a total local investment of only $94,285, which is a pretty good return on your money if you ask me.”

Regarding the $2 million grant that the airport received for the taxi lane E-1 project, King said Warsaw was only one of four airports in Indiana that received funding through that grant program.

“So, we were very fortunate to be the only general aviation airport and that’s a lot in part due to the business that operates  out of our airport on a daily basis,” he said. Bids were opened about a week ago and have not yet been awarded. However, King said the apparent low bid was from Phend & Brown. The construction for the east-west runway has been phased out over three years to do a mill and fill on it. The low bid currently is $874,951.60. King said they’ve already paid $120,000 for the design. With the design, construction and all the finalization and engineering that needs to happen, that cost will be about $222,460 for a total project cost of $1,097,401.60.

He asked the commissioners Tuesday to start the process of working through another MOU with the commissioners for the $500,000 out of the 2025 EDIT fund, and then the airport will pick up the rest of that project costs.

Commissioner Cary Groninger said they’ve talked to the users of the airport, like the orthopedic companies, and what they really wanted to see was runway 9-27 resurfaced because it’s rough. King said it’s No. 1 on everyone’s list to get done. Groninger said the $500,000 is part of the commissioners’ capital plan, has been approved and is appropriated in the commissioners’ 2025 budget. Approval Tuesday would be just for the airport to utilize the money.

Commissioner Bob Conley said the funding the county’s commitment to the airport. “Use it to the best of your ability. That’s all you’re getting is $500,000,” Conley said. Groninger said King did a really good job of trying to have projects that are engineered and ready to go when the opportunity is there. “When you look at our total projects that we’re doing between ‘24 and ‘25 — with power lines, the runway rehab, the taxi lane rehab, a couple different engineering and design projects — we will be just shy of $12 million total in project costs at the airport … so we’re getting a 10-to-1 return on our money,” King said.

The commissioners unanimously approved King’s request.