Business View Magazine | March 2019

63 Regarding the economic picture, Lanman adds that hangar construction is simply too expensive to be able to recover those costs through afford- able rents. “The last time we tried it, we got an estimate of a little over $200 per square foot,” he reports. “If you go further west, you would find it much cheaper – as low as $75-80 per square foot to build hangars. So, you could build a hanger for that and rent it out fairly inexpen- sively; when it’s $250-300 per square foot, it becomes unviable. That’s the biggest problem, here. There’s nothing that we could build inex- pensively enough to amortize it and then start receiving the benefits of it.” However, another way to increase revenue is to make sure that the condition of the Airport’s in- frastructure is top-notch, so that word-of-mouth among its pilots and customers drive more busi- ness. In that regard, Lanman believes that Auburn Lewiston is keeping pace. “At this point, we have done about $3 million of improvements since I got here; we are now in design to do another $10 million worth of improvements within the next two years. So, we’re definitely updating and doing what we can and as much as we can,” he avers. There for toddler at Stephens skier at Sunday River snowmobiler in Jackman cardiac arrest on the Appalachian Trail Learn more today at www.lifeflightmaine.org LifeFlight provides world-class critical care and transport to every community in Maine from our bases in Bangor, Lewiston and Sanford. Proud to have a home at Auburn-Lewiston Airport.