Plans to replace 2,300 feet of Fremont Municipal Airport runway are edging a little closer to take off.
Airport advisory committee members learned during their recent meeting that bids for the work will be opened in May.
A pre-bid meeting for contractors was scheduled for Tuesday, April 25, said Justin Zetterman, the director of public works for the City of Fremont. Contractors interested in the project will submit their bids to the city clerk. Bids will be opened on May 10.
Zetterman said told the committee that several companies already had picked up plans detailing the work.
“We think there’s some good interest out there,” Zetterman said.
Work on the estimated $5.7 million project isn’t expected to start until spring 2024. The airport’s runway has 5,400 feet of pavement. The project will involve tearing out 2,300 feet of the concrete pavement and replacing it.
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On March 28, the Fremont City Council passed a resolution authorizing the city to apply for a $6.73 million grant with the Federal Aviation Administration for the project.
This grant amount request is intended provide a factor of safety should the project exceed the current estimate, Zetterman told the Tribune.
During the meeting, Zetterman talked about why the project is set to take place next year.
“By making it a 2024 project, it seems like that’s made it more appealing to people, because they can now kind of plan their year around that and have that be their project to get started right out of the gate in the spring,” Zetterman said.
He noted that the benefit of pushing the project to 2024 is that it most likely would be a contractor’s first project of the year.
“That way we can be pretty confident that we’ll be the ones that are getting their attention immediately and they won’t have started another job, hopefully, that they’ll be running back and forth,” he said.
Board member Dave Monke wondered about a possible start date for the runway project.
Zetterman said a specific start date hasn’t been determined — except for spring 2024 — but said contractors generally start construction in April.
He said more work on runway potholes was completed and, at this point, utility relocation will be minimal. A section of water main will be insulated instead of lowered.
“It’s kind of on the edge of where we’d like to have a little more depth to stay out of the frost, but not so shallow that we’re really worried about it,” Zetterman said. “That’s helping with the (project) cost as well as the amount of work. So I don’t know that we’ll be seeing any work being done out here in the fall. Previously, we were thinking we might have significant utility relocations to do.”
Zetterman also said he spoke with Anna Lannin, engineering division manager of the Nebraska Department of Transportation, Division of Aeronautics.
She’d indicated that as prices were going up with the utility work, she was getting a little concerned about the FFA grant, but now (because of the minimal amount of utility work needed), feels fairly confident that the FAA is fully in support of the project, Zetterman said.
Advisory committee member Eric Johnson wondered if individual concrete panel replacement would occur on areas of the taxiway and also on one of the connectors (an area of pavement connecting the runway to the taxiway) as part of the runway rehabilitation plan.
Zetterman said nothing was currently included in the project plan, but knows the taxiway and connector have some of the same concrete issues as the runway.
“I will ask if there’s a reason why it wasn’t considered a part of this or if it’s substantial enough that they think it’s a project in and of itself,” Zetterman said.
Zetterman noted that some areas in these locations were patched during the winter.
Robert Steenblock, committee chairman, expressed concern about those projects interfering with the 2,300-foot replacement project and said he believed city personnel could replace individual panels in those locations.
“The city’s concrete guys do as good a job as anybody I know. They do a great job,” Steenblock said.
Airport committee members have discussed runway rehabilitation for months.
Concrete in portions of the runway and other areas of pavement have been deteriorating from within due to an adverse chemical reaction. This type of concrete deterioration has been occurring in multiple sites in Nebraska and other states.
In other business, Zetterman said plans are to have an updated aircraft hangar lease agreement for the board to review in May. Hangars are rented for a five-year term. With the new agreement, he indicated that lease fees would be the same for the first two years, but would increase after that. Starting in the third year, the hangar rent would increase 2.570% per year.
Board meetings, which are open to the public, start at 8:15 a.m., the third Friday of each month at the new airport terminal.