Airport, highway work still ahead this year

Glacier Park International Airport is poised for an upswing in activity this year.

Dennis Beams, a commercial lender with Glacier Bank who sits on the airport board, told a full house at Tuesday's 34th annual Economic Outlook seminar that Airport Director Cindi Martin is meeting with Allegiant Air in an effort to bring in regular flights to Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Nothing has been agreed to yet, but it's one way the airport is trying to boost travel here.

This August's $7.2 million runway upgrade is another. An army of construction and paving equipment will be ready to roll when the main runway closes to commercial air traffic at 10 p.m. Aug. 3, and continue round-the-clock until 9 a.m. that Friday. The pattern repeats through the month.

"There never is a good time [for a runway closure] and it's probably the worst in midsummer," Beams said, but low winter temperatures keep asphalt from flowing and the federal funding doesn't become available until June.

Bidding starts next month on the work he expects to help retain local jobs. General aviation and helicopter traffic will continue on the cross-winds runway.

The board also submitted three other jobs worth $9.8 million to be considered under the federal economic stimulus program - repairing one ramp damaged by glycol used in de-icing planes, installing radar in the control tower and building a separate ramp to be used solely for de-icing.

Kalispell Chamber of Commerce President Joe Unterreiner also gave a quick update on major highway projects in the Flathead.

The U.S. 93 reconstruction from Somers to Whitefish still has two small sections left including the stretch at Church Drive north of Kalispell. Both should be finished this year, leaving only the courthouse couplet in Kalispell to be built.

When completed sometime after 2010, the U.S. 93 job will be an $80 million project stretching over nearly 20 years, Unterreiner said.

The U.S. 93 bypass around Kalispell already has cost $40 million in design and right-of-way acquisition, he said. The local Transportation Advisory Committee is actively working with the highway department to get it completed.

Although a Federal Highway Administration responsibility, the rebuilding of Going-the-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park is a key to tourism in the Flathead, he said. Unterreiner recognized Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., for the $50 million in funding he got authorized in 2008 for the project. It will help work on the alpine section of the road.