Business View Magazine l January 2023

267 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 12 Lumberton Regional Airport traces its origin to the Second World War when the War Department leased the land and constructed an airfield. In 1952 the airport was turned over to the city of Lumberton, and is the halfway point between New York and Miami, became a layover for commercial traffic. The coming of the jet era, and further distances between refueling, saw the jetliners flying over Lumberton and it settled into a life of recreational flying. “We still have daily military traffic,” says Gary Lewis, Airport Manager. “Touch and go refueling, or sometimes they do training operations, but it remains part of what we do. We have a good mix of private and charter-type services, and there is also some corporate traffic, but we do not have commercial aviation. We work cooperatively with the city as well as the county and we have a lot of business projects that are developing around the airport which helps bring in the corporate folks.” One of the larger projects is the planned development of land near the airport for a new business park. The Lumberton area LUMBERTON REGIONAL AI RPORT is seeing a surge of growth which helps the airport, while the airport is both an economic driver and a recreational outlet. Lumberton Regional covers an area of 485 acres and has two runways with asphalt surfaces: 5/23 is 5,502 by 150 feet and 13/31 is 5,003 by 75 feet. Within the last three years, they have constructed a new modern terminal with an operations center, pilot’s lounge, and a large conference room with an adjacent serving kitchen. There is a real sense that this is a great stopping point, and to capitalize on this, they want to offer appropriate amenities. “If you took a look outside of our window you would see a lot of construction going on, “ Lewis points out. “Right now, it’s focused on the taxiways. We have a new taxiway being constructed for the 23 end of our runway which is a six-million- dollar project which is being completed using mostly federal and state funds, with a mix of local funds as well,” he continues.