PEORIA, Ill. — Leaders with Peoria’s Municipal Airport Authority Board have approved a contract to begin engineering and design work for a new runway rehabilitation project likely slated for next year.
At Wednesday’s meeting, board members were scheduled to discuss a contract with the firm Crawford, Murphy & Tilly (CMT) for a mill and overlay rehabilitation project.
According to Peoria Airports Director Gene Olson, that contract was approved by the board, however there are no details made available yet about the terms of the contract.
The project will be designed to smooth over a labyrinth of patched cracks and bumps which run along the length of Runway 4/22 at General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport.
The rehab work will also make the runway more suitable for larger aircraft.
“Basically what we’re going to end up doing is milling off a couple of inches of asphalt and then replacing it with a fresh top coat,” said Olson when he spoke to WMBD News after the meeting on Thursday.
Olson says the project comes as the result of an $8.4M dollar federal grant announced in late July.
“When you do a project like that, you have to engage and engineer to design it for you and you have to also have engineering, inspection and testing and all of those other services,” said Olson.
According to 17th District U.S. House Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL), the federal funds were awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation through the Federal Aviation Administration.
Olson says the project could get underway by Spring of 2023.
