Shenandoah Valley Aviation Technology Park gets help from $100,000 Go Virginia Grant
AUGUSTA COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) - For years, companies have been waiting for hangars at the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport in Weyers Cave.
The airport is already working to add more hangars, but there’s a hurdle... infrastructure. Now, they’re getting money from the commonwealth of Virginia to help.
Currently, utilities run right through the future home of the Shenandoah Valley Aviation Technology Park. In order for the area to reach its full potential, those utilities need to be moved and upgraded.
“If you could visualize there’ll be a big hangar behind this concrete apron,” Greg Campbell, the executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport, said.
The taxiways and aprons are in. The site work and road access is complete. It’s time to construct the Shenandoah Valley Technology Aviation Park.
“We’re gonna build two 14,000 square-foot hangars,” Campbell stated.
The rough plan calls for seven hangars to accommodate business and corporate needs for aircraft storage, but also new technology in aviation like the developing electric airplanes, and advanced air mobility.
“You know you see the drones that people fly around recreationally. There are large ones that are gonna be used to move people from metro areas out to airports and shorter distances,” Campbell stated. It all requires infrastructure. “Water, sewer, fiber, that kind of thing.”
The water and sewer lines cutting through the property were built along the old Airport Road. They need to be up along the new one. “Then feed down in a spine down into this area,” Campbell said. “That’s a pretty major undertaking.”
It’s one that Virginia is helping with. The airport has been awarded a $100,000 Go Virginia Grant to go toward design efforts.
“We can get these first couple hangars started while we’re working on the design for the utilities, but if we’re gonna build a third and fourth and other things back here utilities have got to get relocated,” Campbell stated.
According to Campbell, they hope to be bidding the utility piece and also have a couple of hangars under construction by late spring.
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