Rosalia airport electrical project out for bid

This Gazette file photo shows a hangar at the Rosalia Municipal Airport which was destroyed in a fire July 9, 2014. The hangar and all its contents, including two planes, a boat, a jet ski and a snowmobile, were destroyed in the fire. The Town of Rosalia recently received more than $500,000 in insurance settlement money relating to the fire.

The Town of Rosalia is making plans for upgrades at its airport and currently has a project out for bids. Mayor Nanette Konishi told the Gazette the current project out for bids is for electrical upgrades.

“It's basically everything electrical that has to do with the runway will be upgraded and rebuilt this year,” Konishi said. “There will be new runway lights, and the beacon will be replaced and updated. We've had trouble with that over the years.”

Konishi said the upgrades are being completed with entitlement money from the Federal Aviation Administration. She said the FAA is expected to provide 90 percent of the funds, and the town hopes for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to fund five percent and the town to match WSDOT funds.

“I'm excited about the fact that we're going to do proactive things that are going to make the airport more usable,” Konishi said.

She said the airport, named the Rosalia Municipal Airport, is currently seeing a lot of activity with planes spraying in the area and planes needing to re-fuel there.

Konishi said the hope is for the project to be completed sometime this summer. The timeline of it, she said, depends on who gets the bid.

“Sometime this summer is what we're aiming for, and it probably won't take that long because it's not that big of a job,” she said, adding that she assumes the new lights on the runway will be LED.

This project will kick off a number of other projects planned for the airport, Konishi said. The town received insurance settlement money earlier this year stemming from a July 9, 2014, fire which destroyed a hangar at the airport. The settlement money totaled more than $500,000, and the town will be issued the money in small increments.

“Whatever we purchase with it has to benefit the airport in some way,” Konishi said, noting matching funds for the current project will come out of the settlement money. “The insurance settlement will be used for other airport upgrades the FAA doesn't fund.”

Konishi reported future plans for the airport include improvements to the taxiway and access road by the airport, as well as upgrades to the septic tanks and fuel system. The town is also hoping to construct new T-hangars which will be used for airplanes. Konishi said these are small connective hangars that will differ from the previous hangar, which was larger and used to store a number of items.

“The guy who was leasing it had quite a bit of property in there,” Konishi said. “Everything was destroyed that had been in there.”

“Our goal is to build a few hangars that we can lease out,” she said.

The town had the option to rebuild the previous hangar, but it did not make sense, Konishi said. The hangar would have needed to be built according to state regulations with a number of upgrades from its previous state, including water suppression, insulation, an elevator and a handicapped accessible restroom, among other things.

“All of those things made us think twice about it,” Konishi said. “We had to think about who we were going to rent that to. It would have been $1,500 to $2,000 a month. Who's going to do that?”

The smaller hangars made more sense, she said, as they will be able to be leased out at a cheaper rate and rented to more people.

“We were building the Taj Mahal for a tiny airport,” Konishi said. “It just didn't make any sense.”

She added that more projects will likely be planned and the town will rotate between projects from one year to the next.

“This is actually just getting to the start because we really just got the insurance,” Konishi said.

The current project out for bid calls for interested consulting firms to submit proposals for providing design engineering, surveying, testing, environmental and construction contract administration. Deadline for those proposals is April 15, and questions can be directed to Jenna McDonald, Rosalia town clerk/treasurer, at 509-523-5991.