Oak Ridge airport could break ground in 2020
Plans for the long-awaited Oak Ridge airport have continued to progress in recent months, and leaders of the project are gaining confidence that the town could have a general aviation airport in the next two years if plans fall into place as hoped.
The city has had several iterations of airport plans over the years, but Oak Ridge City Manager Mark Watson said this time is different.
“This one has legs and if we’re going to get one, it’s the one that will make it work,” he said last week.
As it currently stands, plans call for a 5,000foot runway, a partial parallel taxiway and about 40 hangars on 171 acres that was acquired from the Department of Energy. It is part of the former K-25 uranium enrichment facility site, which the Department of Energy has been working for more than a decade to reclaim for industrial use and is now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park.
The total cost of the project is estimated to run from $47-55 million.
Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority, which oversees McGhee Tyson Airport and Downtown Island Airport, is managing the project.
The airport authority has been spearheading the project since 2009 as a way to serve the business, technology and government contract markets in Oak Ridge. As it stands, Watson said, Oak Ridge is the largest city in the state without a general aviation airport.
Project consultant Billy Stair said the increase in the region’s population, combined with increased business travel from places like Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Coqui Pharmaceuticals Corp. — who will rely on it for their business of transporting medical isotopes and could fly 400-500 times a year — make an airport necessary.
A new airport also will cut down on Knoxville’s busy Downtown Island Airport, which has over 100 pilots on a waiting list wanting to store planes there.
“All of that is to say there is an increased demand on air capacity in the Knoxville region and one of the factors of the decision is that Downtown Island, by virtue of being an island, has severe constraints on the ability to expand,” Stair said.