More than $1M in state dollars awarded for airport facelift

New hangar, lighting among items airport officials want improved

Palatka Municipal Airport Manager John Youell stands by a private aircraft housed in a leased hangar at the airport.
Positively Putnam FL

By Carly Zervis

Palatka Daily News

czervis@palatkadailynews.com

The Palatka Municipal Airport – Lt. Jasper Kennedy “Kay” Larkin Field – will get a new hangar and upgraded lighting, thanks to some funding from the Florida Department of Transportation.

The new hangar will expand the airport’s plane storage capacity from 65 to 71, alleviating a bit of the wait for space. Airport Manager John Youell said more than 100 people are currently on the list for a hangar rental.

Part of the charm of Palatka’s airport, at least for pilots: a 6,000-foot runway, which can accommodate jets up to a certain size.

“This runway is just barely shorter than (the longest runway at) Chicago’s Midway Airport,” Youell said.

The money is broken down into several pieces for different elements of the construction and upgrade project. The lighting upgrades to seven existing hangars, housing 59 aircraft, will cost about $100,000, including construction management costs. Building the new six-unit hangar will cost about $1 million.

The entire amount will come from the Florida Department of Transportation – the city isn’t required to provide any matching funding to secure the grant.

Between the wait for space and the old lighting, Youell said, it’s a necessary project.

“It needs to happen. There’s insufficient lighting here,” he explained. “… The most recent hangars were built about eight years ago. They have LED indoor and outdoor lighting. When it gets dark, you can definitely tell the difference between that hangar and the ones with old incandescent lights.”

With the amount of space rentals and additional air traffic the airport sees, safety is paramount.

“Florida is a huge aviation state. You can fly year-round,” Youell continued. “There’s a lot of retired military pilots in Florida who still engage in aviation. My goodness, we’re 70 miles away from where the space program started. We should be a huge, world-leading aviation community.”