Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Work on airport hangar moving to slowly for county commissioners


            Work on a new corporate hangar at the Apalachicola-Franklin County airport is moving forward but not quickly enough to make local county commissioners happy.        

A Panama City firm called Shumaker Incorporated is building the 11 thousand square foot hangar at a cost of over 800 thousand dollars.

The hangar can hold a number of airplanes and can also be fitted to paint and refurbish aircraft.

County commissioners say that’s what they want it to be used for because it would bring more jobs to Franklin County.

The project manager said the job is 60 to 70 percent complete and is probably 6 weeks from substantial completion.

The deadline for the project is the end of the month – but the contractor will likely not make that date.

Work on the project began nearly a year ago but was delayed by a number of unforeseen issues including weather and difficulties clearing the construction site, but commissioners say its time to get the job finished and get the hanger rented out.

Lee Lewis, who is overseeing the project, said there has been some interest in the hangar from various groups but none has yet made an official offer.

Commissioners say the process is not moving forward quickly enough for them – Pinki Jackel said that the county has managed to construct and open the new medical clinic in Carrabelle in a shorter time than it is taking to get the hangar built.

All of the commissioners agreed that more needs to be done to advertise the hangar who might want to rent it.

Commissioner Cheryl Sanders said if more isn’t done soon the county might have to go out there and do the work themselves.

Commission chairman Noah Lockley said now that the commission has put some fuel on the fire so now everyone should get to work.


http://www.oysterradio.com e-mail manager@oysterradio.com with comments

No comments:

Post a Comment