The process to replace the aging air traffic control tower at the General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport has faced some bumps in the road.
Gene Olson, director of Airports for the Metropolitan Airport Authority, says funding holds the key to the complex project to replace the current air traffic control tower that dates back to 1959. It’s a process that’s been in the works for several years.
Olson says the project was chosen to receive grants through the $1.2 trillion bipartisan federal infrastructure bill that was passed in 2021. He said the original belief was that two separate awards would each cover about half the total cost.
“They awarded the first grant; the second grant they announced but didn't award, because we didn't have bids in hand yet,” Olson said. “The reason we didn't have bids in hand was because the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), their standards for what a control tower should be had changed so much in the five years between when we finished the design and when we were getting ready to build it, that we had to go back and do almost a year's worth of redesign.”
Olson says after the redesign work was completed, the project went back out for construction bids in March.
“The bids came in way high, beyond what we had the ability to fund, so we had to go back and kind of rethink the project,” Olson said. “What we did was we split the project into two construction phases.”
Olson says those phases would be to build the two sections of the new building separately.
“There's a control tower shaft, which is the tall skinny part that has the glass room on top – that's the expensive part,” he said. “Then there's a base building that has the administrative offices and communications equipment and backup power and all that kind of stuff. So we have enough funding lined up to be able to build the base building first.”
Olson said they reworked the tower design plans and put that part of the project back out for bids at the end of June.
“Those bids actually came in better than we thought they were going to, and so we've got that lined up and I expect that we'll get that other half of the grant – that was announced but not awarded yet – we'll get that like any day now,” Olson said.
However, he noted the full price tag to build the new tower has increased sharply.
“We thought originally that this project was going to cost about $27 million to build, and right now the unfunded portion of it is $27 million. So we're looking at almost $60 million to build this project,” he said.
And there's one other wrinkle they've encountered. Current work leading up to the base building construction is related to mine mitigation.
“There was, I think it was called the ‘Clark’ coal mine, that I believe was closed in about 1924 or 1927, so it's about 100 years ago,” he said. “That mine starts on Farmington Road a couple of blocks east of Maxwell Road – and it's all sealed up now; you can't get there, can't get in. But that's where it started, and it was about 80 feet deep there. And then it went down kind of Maxwell Road and got wider and wider as it went south, and it stopped somewhere in our parking lot.”
Olson said in the 1960s steps were taken to address the mines that were underneath what was at that time the new terminal.
“They drilled holes underneath the building and then injected grout in there to stabilize that, so there wouldn't be a collapse,” he said. “Well, here we are 50 years later and we're going through the same process for the new control tower.”
Olson said that process is currently underway in a small portion of the parking lot, as well as beneath an access road and the footprint of the new control tower between the terminal and the Byerly Aviation building.
“Down there, it's around 200 feet deep. So we're drilling holes down 175 to 200 feet deep and injecting grout in there, so that if there is a collapse it will be far enough away that it won't hurt the tower,” he said.
Barring any additional setbacks, Olson said they hope to have the base building construction finished in about a year, and hope to get the funding to build the tower shaft by early next year.
“We'll probably have bids on the street in January, probably would take bids by the end of February, and then if the finances are all arranged, we'd probably start on the tower shaft itself in May or June of next year,” he said.
Olson says once the new tower is ready, it will require a commissioning process where the current control tower remains in operation to make sure all the systems are working in the new tower.
