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Danville airport requests $100,000 in local match, outlines festival plans
Summary
At a Danville City Commission special call meeting, airport board member Rob Cowell outlined a summer balloon festival, facility upgrades and a request for $100,000 in local matching funds to buy property and complete projects tied to FAA grants and hangar construction.
Rob Cowell, presenting for the Danville airport board, told the Danville City Commission on a special-call meeting that the airport is seeking local support to complete several projects and previewed a proposed balloon festival for August.
Cowell said the airport is planning a balloon event for Aug. 24 that drew an estimated “3 to 4,000 people” last year, and that volunteers and local partners have stepped forward to help organize the festival. “We have the balloons in order, and we have the parking folks in order,” Cowell said.
The airport’s formal budget request to the commission includes three local-match items for FAA-funded projects and an additional $100,000 total to acquire roughly 1 acre of land to connect drives to a new entrance road. Cowell said the airport asks the city to provide $50,000 and the county to provide the other $50,000 toward that purchase.
Cowell also said the airport is seeking local matching money to finish an entrance road project and to provide the local match for a new corporate hangar, which recently came in “right on the engineer’s estimate.” He said the airport is “running out of space in our corporate hangars” and needs the federal portion’s local match to proceed.
Other items in the written request include funds for the airport’s insurance policy and to lease a three-row vehicle for visiting corporate customers. Cowell said the business-plan contract under way is for about $151,000 and that the airport’s prior annual city award of $50,000 toward that work had continued for two years; he noted the airport is not formally requesting the additional $51,000 now but asked the commission to consider it.
Cowell also noted that an engineering firm contracted by the airport, Kimley and Horn, was selected by the Kentucky Department of Aviation to perform a statewide system plan. “I’ve been real impressed with what they’ve done so far,” Cowell said.
The presentation concluded with a pair of public-event notices: a fly‑in with food trucks on Saturday at 11 a.m. and a Young Eagles program offering free airplane rides in the coming month. Cowell asked commissioners to consider providing traffic control and portable toilets for the balloon event as they had in the prior year.
Commissioners asked for clarification of the budget breakdown and thanked Cowell for providing specific line items. No formal vote was taken at the meeting on the airport request; commissioners and staff said they would include the airport’s proposal in the department- and shared-agency budget review that will follow.
Ending: Cowell’s request will be part of the commission’s upcoming budget deliberations and the airport board’s specific matching items will be considered alongside other shared-agency requests at later hearings.
