‘Investment in the well-being of our entire community’

Time was, unless you were a private pilot or lived on the far south side of town, you might not be aware at all of Boulder City’s small municipal airport.

But that is going to get a lot harder to do over the next few years as construction gets going on a long-discussed air traffic control tower and the number of private hangars is set to more than double.

The tower development has been a long time coming. The FAA first identified the need for one —based on the amount of traffic and the potential for aircraft collisions —back in 2007. If all goes according to plans (which are already as much as a year behind where they were touted to be, in May of 2024), construction will begin next summer.

Timeline

“We’ve just started the design last month,” said Airport Manager Marissa Adou in an interview this week. “So that’s going to take probably until next year this time. We will get to a 30% design and we expect that to be done by mid-November and then we’ll put out an advertisement looking for the construction manager. And then we will do a selection process to find that company, and then they will help us through the rest of the design process to select materials and stuff like that, that will just be more readily available based on what’s happening in the industry in this area at that time.”

Once the design is finished and ground broken, Adou said that between construction and FAA certification, it will be 18-23 months before the tower goes online. So, early to mid-summer of 2028.

No funds for construction will come out of the city’s general fund budget. Funding will be 90% provided by an FAA grant and the remaining 10% comes from the Airport Enterprise Fund. (Reminder: revenue generated by the airport goes into an enterprise fund and can only be used to fund activities connected to the airport.)

Regardless, in the past two years, multiple city projects have seen their budgets explode. A planned second fire substation was scuttled when the budget soared by nearly double and the long-discussed and still not started replacement for the city’s aging pool will likely cost more than double what was first envisioned. The tower project is taking a novel approach to ensure that does not happen.

“We’ll be building the tower with a ‘construction manager at risk’ and to help us get the best price for the construction of the tower. So they’ll help us with value engineering while we work on the design,” Adou noted.

What is a “construction manager at risk”?

“It’s a project delivery and construction method, where the owner — which would be the city — hires a construction manager early in the design phase, and that manager will guarantee the project to be completed at a preset maximum price,” Adou explained. “So they’ll help us go through the design of the tower and then, at a certain point, they will say, ‘This can be built for this price,’ and they will lock it in.”

Once the price is set, Adou explained, the city will go to the FAA to fund the already-agreed-to grant for 90% of the cost.

And the FAA will be footing the bill for staffing the tower as well.

“We use grant funding to build and the federal contract tower program will pay for the controllers to staff the tower and then the city just maintains the building,”Adou said.

No change in aircraft type

So does a control tower mean that larger aircraft will be able to use the airport? No, Adou said.

“That is determined by the size of our runways that we build out here and the length,” she said.

The need for a tower, according to Adou, is about existing traffic.

“The airport has evolved over the time that it has been here,” she said. “With all of the tour traffic that we’ve had here with the Grand Canyon sightseeing tours, and that has grown exponentially over the years.”

According to Adou, the tower is a boon to safety for the entire community.

“The tower will introduce controlled air space within a five-mile radius of the airport, which includes much of Boulder City itself,” she said. “By organizing the flow of aircraft in and out of the area, the tower will ensure safer skies and reduce congestion, especially during peak times and large events when air traffic increases dramatically.”

She explained that an air traffic control tower will also improve response to aircraft incidents.

“For example if an aircraft experiences a flat tire, controllers in the tower will be able to quickly pinpoint its location, allowing aircraft recovery to be completed more efficiently,” she explained.

Adou noted, “We’re growing already, even though we don’t have a tower. With the land development and with the construction of additional facilities, this is gonna be a fantastic addition to the airport because it adds another layer of safety just by helping to organize the traffic as it comes in and out of the airport.”

Adou concluded, saying, “The new tower is an investment not just in the airport—but in the well-being of our entire community.”