Airport lands $983K grant from FAA for taxiway design

The Texarkana Regional Airport will recieve nearly $983,000 in grant money from the Federal Aviation Administration to help pay for designing the airport’s longest taxiway.

U.S. legislative officials announced Monday that the airport will receive $982,998 in FAA funds to design the taxiway that will ultimately be built in conjunction with plans to build a new passenger terminal by 2021. The taxiway will flank the entire length of the airport’s primary runway, which is about 6,600 feet long, Airport Director Mark Mellinger said.

The grant will fund 90 percent of the estimated $1,092,220 it will take to design the taxiway, Mellinger said. The other 10 percent will be provided for in matching grant funds, amounting to about $109,222, from the Arkansas Department of Aeronautics.

The taxiway will be close to the proposed new passenger terminal, which will cross the airport’s main runway from the current, vintage 1959 terminal. It will have a new entry off East 19th Street. Plans for

building a new terminal started back in the mid-2000s.

Mellinger said that if the FAA is able to turn the paperwork over to the airport by Thursday, he might be able to put the grant offer on the Airport Authority Board’s Thursday meeting agenda so that board members could vote on approving and accepting the grant.

Once the board approves and accepts the grant, Mellinger said, engineering design work can start on the taxiway—a design project that could take eight to 10 months to complete. Once the design is complete, the airport will need an estimated $9.2 million to construct the taxiway. Construction could start in 2019 or 2020, depending on when state and federal grant funding is received.