A much lower than anticipated bid on airline hangar construction enabled council to approve a $120,000 furniture purchase and landscaping.
“That money is to come from the money originally budgeted for the hangars,” said
Councilwoman Jennifer Willis in her motion. “Hangars were originally budgeted at about $420,000. The bid came in at around $256,000.”
County officials were “a little surprised” at the difference between the expected bid and the actual bid, said County Administrator J. Chappell Hurst.
J. Davis Construction, who placed the winning bid for the hangars, are already on site, working on the terminal building, which factored into the company’s low bid he said.
“He already his employees on site, his equipment’s there, and so it could kind of become an extensions of that project,” Hurst said. “Someone who may have bid a littler higher, they would have had to have relocated all of their equipment to that site.”
The economy has resulted in the county receiving better prices on bids for its projects, Hurst said.
Work on the 10 hangars is scheduled to begin this month, and each hangar has already been rented, with a waiting list available as well.
Hurst estimated the hangars will be completed in less than six months.
Council had planned for the landscaping and furniture to be paid for by private industry.
“The thought was we would get private industry to pay for naming rights and those sorts of things,” Willis said. “Recognizing the economy, realizing that would be a very difficult thing today, we’re going to go ahead and get that building up and running so we can be bringing planes in.”
The county will continue to seek out industries interested in purchasing naming rights for the airport terminal, Willis said.
“We’ll continue to try to market those naming rights and try to recoup those naming rights in the future,” she said.
Council voted unanimously to fund the landscaping and buy the furniture.
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