PEORIA, Ill. – A “long awaited day“ for the Peoria International Airport has arrived.
The airport held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday morning for the facility’s new air traffic control tower. The current tower has been in use since 1959, and was determined in 2005 to be replaced instead of rehabilitated.
Discussions on the new tower began in 2009, with design work on the new tower starting in 2012.
“You work on a project for 12 years, it gets to be part of your fiber,” said Director of Airports Gene Olson.
Olson says the current tower only has about a few years life on its lifespan. He says current issues with the tower include it being too short to see all of the airport’s runways, the building itself not meeting federal ADA standards, and asbestos in the building.
Without building a new air traffic control tower, Olson says flights coming in and out of Peoria would stop completely.
“There’s 320,000 to 350,000 people a year that get on airplanes here that are going to have to drive somewhere else if we don’t do this project,” Olson said.
Olson says Peoria would take a significant economic hit without air travel in the area.
The tower project has been awarded around $30 million in federal funding, with that amount covering the base of the tower, as well as an administrative building. Olson says they still need to raise around $27 million through grants or locally to construct the tower itself.
Olson says there’s no timeline set yet for when construction will start, but expects the project to be completed in 2-3 years.
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