July 2018

274 275 PREFERRED VENDOR n Cape Air capeair.com Whether you’re traveling for business or a getaway, Cape Air makes it easy with fast, frequent, daily flights. Need to get to the city for a meeting? Fly to Boston from Bar Harbor, Augusta, or Rockland, and be there in minutes. Book now at capeair.com . Enjoy the ride! THE KNOX COUNTY REGIONAL AIRPORT concerned, he says the Airport’s main parking apron is going to be redone and concurrent with that project will be infrastructure work, including a new taxiway and emergency access road for a new hangar section. “In less than five years, my hope is that we have a new hangar area.We have one hangar area where we have 53 hangars on the other side of the runway. Those hangars are anywhere from 20 to 40 years old and they’re for a very specific small, General Aviation, single-engine kind of hangar set-up. The current demand is for some of the larger aircraft, including jet traffic. Our hope is that within the next five years, we will have an additional 30 hangars on the business side of the ramp.” voltas of the world who want to come in here at ‘o-dark-thirty’ with their jet. So I think bringing everybody to the ta- ble and integrating those stakeholders and the different communities and the different interests, has been a success story for at least the last 15 years.” Northgraves admits, though, that there are some problems that are more intractable: there are still some restric- tions contained in some of the deeds covering Knox County Regional’s land that prohibit non-aviation uses - which is something Northgraves wants to change. “I’ve been slowly, through the master-plan process, trying to identify areas that we don’t foresee ever being needed for aviation purposes so that, at some point in the future, it would be possible,” he explains. “But since we started that a little less than 10 years ago, all of the deeded land at the Airport, a little over 400 acres, is pretty much restricted as to what we can do.” Options for expansion and annex- ation are limited, as well, because of the Airport’s location near several road- ways, which hem-in the runways. Plus, an agreement between Knox County and the Town of Owls Head bars any expansion until 2020. But Northgraves doesn’t anticipate there ever being a need to expand the airport’s footprint. Where updates and upgrades are The current demand is for some of the larger aircraft, including jet traffic. Our hope is that within the next five years, we will have an additional 30 hangars on the business side of the ramp. JEFF NORTHGRAVES AIRPORT MANAGER