Monett airport contracts awarded

City advancing on hangar, future engineering, cost nearly $1.25m
 
The Monett City Council took several steps to make improvements at the Monett Regional Airport during its Nov. 13 meeting.
After a year of discussion and preliminary work, the city council awarded a contract for construction of a new 80-by-80-foot hangar that will be located southeast of the terminal building. A design for the project was developed by Woolpert Engineering of Jefferson City, which oversaw the vetting and bids for the project.
City Administrator Mickey Ary said this is a three-part process. Construction of the hangar will only be the first phase. The next two phases include construction of a parking lot and access road, with bids between $95,000 and $145,742, followed by building an additional access road, where bids ranged from $47,589 to $65,000.
Bids for the project were sought in August and submitted to the Missouri Department of Transportation in mid-October.
Mayor Randy Burke said the entire $1,249,000 cost will be covered by federal funds funneled through the Federal Aviation Administration via MoDOT. The city received three bids, all higher than the engineer’s estimate, ranging up to $1.6 million. Base Construction Management of Springfield won with the low bid.
The city also needed to contract with an engineering firm for ongoing airport work. Requests for qualifications went out in April. The contract went to Woolpert. Joe Pestka, vice president of Woolpert, has been engaged on Monett airport projects for more than two decades. Awarding the contract was seen as a continuation of services primarily provided in the past by Pestka. The master service agreement for aviation engineering services has no expiration date.
Airport work detailed in the proposal included “additional hangars, maintenance upgrades, safety precautions, and customer care.” The agreement with Woolpert also listed construction of a fuel facility, obstruction removal and avigation easement acquisition, rehabilitating the former runway which now serves as the taxiway, installing an airport perimeter fence, adding a medium intensity approach lighting system (MALSF) for aligning instrument landings with the centerline of the runway, rehabilitating the access road and auto parking, and constructing an additional 10-unit hangar.
Moving the automated weather observing system (AWOS) from its present location, where data gathering would be blocked by the new hangar, to the west side of the runway, is slated to take place in 2026.
Asked about the pending lawsuit with Sierra Bravo Contractors over the 2020 excavation work to extend the airport’s runway to 6,001 feet, brought by the contractor, Burke said the city is “working on it.” The suit has been pending for more than two years.