$3 million taxiway project will cost airport, Charles City and Floyd County zero dollars

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The North Cedar Aviation Authority got doubly good news Wednesday at its monthly meeting.

The group — which manages the Northeast Iowa Regional Airport near Charles City — looked at bids for a big taxiway replacement project it has been working on for a number of years.

The airport authority tentatively approved a bid that was lower than the estimated cost for the project, and that will have additional funding available to pay for it.

Mike Bearden, executive vice president and aviation group leader with Clapsaddle-Garber Associates in Marshalltown, the airport’s engineering consultant, said the apparent low bid came from Croell Inc. in New Hampton, for $2,844,812.

Incidentally or coincidentally, Croell keeps a plane at the Charles City airport.

Bearden said his estimate for the construction cost was about $2.879 million, so the low bid was under his estimate. He said there were five bids, with the highest being about $3.2 million.

The project had been designed as a 90/10 funding split with the Federal Aviation Administration, with the FAA paying 90% and the aviation authority paying 10%.

“The really, really good news is that it will be a 100% FAA grant instead of the 90/10,” Bearden said. “With this corona stuff, they’ve put additional money on the table.”

With a total project cost of about $3 million including engineering, the airport authority had expected to need to come up with 10% of that, or a little more than $300,000. It had proposed splitting the cost three ways with Charles City and Floyd County.

“Now they’ll have to come up with zero,” Bearden said.

“We’ve submitted the apparent low bidder to FAA this morning,” Bearden said Thursday. “We’re waiting for them to concur with the award — that usually takes a few days — then we will submit a grant application for the construction and the construction engineering services.”

Construction will likely begin in April 2021, he said.

“It’s just too late in the year to start that big of a project,” Bearden said. “I think that’s why we got good bids. Everyone could plan on a big project for next spring, versus trying to squeeze it in this year.”

The current taxiway is too close to the main runway at the airport and the surface is beginning to deteriorate.

The new taxiway will be farther away and will address an FAA concern with the current taxiway orientation that some pilots who are unfamiliar with the airport might taxi out from the terminal and turn directly onto the runway while thinking they are just turning onto the taxiway.

The new taxiway is far enough away that it can be constructed while the main runway remains in use, but there will be a few short times next summer when the runway is shut down while the new taxiway connections to the existing runway are being built, Bearden said.

Also, the runway will be daytime use only during part of construction, because the existing power source for the runway lights goes through an area that will have to be graded for the new taxiway.

“We will try to minimize the impacts, but there will be some short-term impacts,” Bearden said.