CRESTVIEW — Bob Sikes Airport has pre-permitted buildings sites, up-to-date infrastructure and an 8,000-foot runway.
It just lacks easy access.
But that is about to change, Okaloosa County interim Airports Director Tracy Stage said.
Design and construction of Foy Shaw Industrial Parkway, a direct link to Crestview’s airport and industrial parks from U.S. Highway 90, has received $6.5 million in state grants.
All it took was Gov. Rick Scott and the secretary of the Florida Department of Transportation third district getting lost in Shoffner City neighborhoods en route to the airport to spur the funding, Stage said.
The state has invested more than $70 million in upgrades to Bob Sikes Airport over the past several years, Stage said during a Nov. 12 presentation to the Crestview Area Chamber of Commerce Airport Committee.
“When you go to the state and they know how much they’ve invested in this general aviation airport, and then you tell them, ‘You can’t get to it unless you go down some tiny little roads, maybe through some neighborhoods, maybe a dirt road or two,’ it kinda doesn’t make sense when you’ve got that much invested,” Stage said. “The state recognized that.”
The parkway — named for the former Crestview mayor and one of the chamber of commerce’s founders — “will give us that industrial connectivity of a major roadway,” Stage said.
From Highway 90, airport traffic will have easy access to Interstate 10 at the Mossy Head interchange, and the CSX Railroad line.
“We are now in full-blown design,” Stage said. “We look to have bid-able construction drawings by July 1.”
Stage said parkway construction should be well underway by the summer of 2017.
Okaloosa County Interim Airports Director Tracy Stage says these are some of the projects recently completed or in the works at Bob Sikes Airport in Crestview:
●5,000-square-foot terminal completed for fixed-base operator Emerald Coast Aviation, with county-constructed parking lot
●Lease of 58,000-square-foot apron to Quest Air Parts for aircraft parking
●Secured Florida Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration grant funding to complete apron and taxiway repaving with “Crestview Mix,” an aviation-fuel impervious asphalt
●Bob Sikes, Destin and Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airports to be represented at NBAA Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition, the world’s largest business aircraft industry exhibition
AIRPORT PROGRESS
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: $6.5M grant pushes Foy Shaw Industrial Parkway project forward (VIDEO)