After Feb. 7, someone will be able to erect hangars at the McComb-Pike County Airport.
Bids for building a set of 10 T-hangars will be opened that day, allowing for the expansion of plane garaging capacity at the airport.
The project is funded by an $800,000 grant from the federal government through the Mississippi Department of Transportation that was intended to last three years, in which the project was supposed to be completed.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic hit around the time the grant was awarded, providing challenges to getting materials and securing matching funds from the city and county until close to two years of the three-year grant period had passed.
The grant period was supposed to end this March, but MDOT approved an extension last month.
Both McComb and Pike County agreed to guarantee half of the required $400,000 in matching funds needed to secure the grant.
The T-hangars will accommodate small personal craft. The storage space is T-shaped to allow the narrower bodies of those plans to fit in the stem of the T, while the wider wings fit in the T’s crossbar.
The airport’s lighting and taxiway rehabilitation project, which has already been awarded to Barriere Construction of Louisiana and Lewis Electric, will begin later this spring.
In other business, the board:
• Approved a prospective lease for a tenant in a hangar being vacated by Southeastern Rail Services. The term is 35 years, with periodic review. The tenant, who will make improvements to the hangar, operates a charity that flies cancer patients for treatment in Houston and Nashville.
• Noted a slight decrease in traffic count to 298 in December, attributed to weather conditions.
