Business View Magazine - October 2018

116 117 local tax support whatsoever.” Speaking of capital projects, the Airport is currently expanding taxiways to accommodate larger aircraft, such as the Boeing 757-300, which is about 19 feet longer than the 757-200 the Air- port serves now. The additional length is required for turns, explains Dahl. “We have about seven in- tersections that are eventually going to be rebuilt for that aircraft, but right now, we’re doing five of them,” he says. “Then, once that project is done, we’ll roll into a project where we’ll potentially be relocating our parallel taxiway to our primary runway and that will see the resurfacing of that runway. It’s about a $15 million project to relo- cate that taxiway and rebuild it. That’s probably the largest project that’s coming up in the near term.We do have plans for additional buildings, such as run-up engine testing maintenance pads, but those are a little bit down the road. The pri- mary thing that we’ve had is the runway expan- sion in 2012, which allowed us to bring in larger aircraft and then the project that’s going on right now, and then the taxiway relocation project which will accommodate 757-300s all over the Airport. So we’re doing pretty well to expand to make sure we can always meet our growing air- craft demand.” Should expansion ever be considered, the Airport has plenty of room, with about 330 acres of developable property at its disposal. Dahl says that’s another characteristic that sets St. Louis Downtown apart from other airports of its type. ST. LOUIS DOWNTOWN AIRPORT “It’s somewhat unique that we’re so close to a downtown center, but we still have room to expand,” he reports. “A lot of airports like us, like the Kansas City Downtown Airport, in Kansas City, Mo.— they’re pretty land-locked and they’re trying to figure out how to reorganize their inter- nal structure to accommodate more hangars. For us, we have lots of land to build on if we need to. The Sauget Business Park is the business park near the Airport. It does have land available that, if we wanted to, we could buy land to expand the Airport. But as it is today, we have lots of land to expand and build new hangars. Our runway prob- ably would not get any longer than it is today; it’s 7,002 feet long. As for the aircraft that we have, the 757 and the Gulfstream 650, that runway length is appropriate for pretty much all the oper- ations they would need to do.” Ironically, servicing those larger aircraft also impacts St. Louis Downtown Airport’s competitive scope beyond regional, statewide, or even na- tional concerns. It all comes down to the distance those planes can travel. “When you look at the Gulfstream 650 ER, or the 757s, or the aircraft that Gulfstream is build- ing, or the aircraft that West Star is maintaining, they have such large ranges in flight that they could literally go anywhere in the world to be maintained,” explains Dahl. “So our competi- tion isn’t local. Our competition is pretty much worldwide. So, when you think about the St. Louis Downtown Airport as being downtown in