Height variance approved for proposed airport tower

On occasion, the city is required to go before, well, itself to seek approval on something.

Last Wednesday, that occurred when the city came before the Boulder City Planning Commission seeking a height variance for a proposed air traffic control tower at the Boulder City Airport.

The commission voted 4-0 for approval of the variance. Three of the commission members were not in attendance.

Because the proposed structure exceeds the height limits currently permitted by its own ordinance, the city was requesting a variance to allow construction of the tower.

In a letter to the commission from Airport Manager Marissa Adou, she wrote, “The proposed tower is expected to be approximately 108 feet in height and is needed for the safe and expeditious flow of air traffic operation.”

By comparison, the tower at the Harry Reid International Airport is just over 350 feet high.

Boulder City Airport has become the third busiest in Nevada based on enplanements, for private and commercial use. It will be the sixth airport in Nevada to have a tower.

It was recently announced that the airport would be the recipient of a $10 million grant from the FAA to help build that tower. According to the city, the project is currently in the design phase with construction expected to start this fall. The project has a completion date of summer 2028.

After that announcement was made, Adou said the need for an air traffic control tower at the current airport has been discussed for many years.

“In 2007, the FAA recommended the city consider a tower due to the airport’s increasingly complex mix of helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, and parachuting operations,” she told the Review. “That activity has continued to grow since air tour operations expanded in the mid-2000s.”

The project consists of the construction of a new air traffic control tower and associated support building. In 2011, the city applied to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Federal Contract Tower Program, which evaluates an airport’s benefit to cost ration to determine if the operational and safety benefits of a control tower outweigh the associated cost of staffing the facility, Adou wrote to the commission.

In August 2024 an Environmental Assessment for the proposed project was completed to analyze the potential environmental impacts of the proposed aviation project to determine if there would be a significant effect on the human environment. The FAA issued a ‘Finding of No Significant Impact’ associated with the proposed air traffic control tower facility. On July 31, 2024, the FAA issued a final determination with no objection to the construction of the proposed tower.

“In making this determination, the FAA has considered matters such as the effects the proposal would have on existing or planned traffic patterns of neighboring airports, the effects it would have on the existing airspace structure and projected programs of the FAA, the effects it would have on the safety of persons and property on the ground, and the effects that existing or proposed man-made objects, and known natural objects within the affected area would have on the airport proposal,” the FAA stated in a letter to the city in 2024.