BONHAM - For the city of Bonham, the $1.6 million aviation grant from the Texas Department of Transportation's Aviation Division may be the start of a series of economic growth spurts leading to more improvements.
The Texas Transportation Commission gave final approval in January for the grant for Jones Field. It requires the city of Bonham to match 10 percent, $160,000. Bonham City Manager Bill Shipp said the bulk of the money will be used to fund new hangars at the municipal airport. Additionally, improvements will include 42,000 square feet of extra apron space and taxiways to the new hangars. The city hopes to build approximately 12 new hangars, but the final count will depend on how bids for construction come out.
"We have a waiting list of people waiting for hangar space, and we believe that we're going to … when this is completed, almost immediately fill up those hangars," Shipp said. "These are people who are now keeping their airplanes in McKinney or Sherman, or wherever it might be, and I think anytime you bring people into the community that haven't been regularly in the community before, you're driving some side benefits. You've got people who are eating in your restaurants. You've got people who are stopping off at Walmart and buying a few things."
For the city that means sales tax revenue.
Looking down the road, Shipp said, the airport improvements pave the way for business tenants. "As we continue to make improvements at the airport, we still have room to make further improvements, and I think the more we bring people to the airport and show them what we have, the more opportunity we have for some other larger hangars and possibly some small businesses on the airport."
In the short term, however, the new hangars will mean revenue from the rent that can be directed toward other city needs.
Shipp said the city plans to use that rent revenue to make the payments on a $585,000 debt issuance. The Bonham City Council will be consider it Monday. Shipp said he thinks the rent revenue from the new hangars to be enough to fund the new debt payments. The city plans to finance the debt over 10 years, though Shipp said he expects the city to reorganize its debt through refinancing in 2016.
Of the $585,000, $160,000 will be used for the city's matching portion of the aviation grant. Then the city plans to spend $257,000 for a complete rehabilitation of Fire Station 1. "It's an old station that's got all matter of problems," Shipp said. "We're going to do a major rehab to that."
The remaining $130,000 will be spent for improvements of the recreation area at Lake Bonham. "The recreation area, which the city owns, is a wonderful spot," Shipp said. "However, some of the facilities are outdated." Specifically, the electricity to the recreational vehicle sites is inadequate for modern RVs and the pad sites need work, said the city manager.
"We're at least going to get adequate power out there and do some work on some of the pad sites to make them work better for RVs today, which will also be a revenue generator for us," Shipp said.
"The lake out there is a hidden gem, … and I think as we provide those facilities out there for more campers, more people will discover Bonham," he continued. "We're proud of what we have here, so we feel like the more people who discover us, the more people will like us, the more people will spend money here."
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