Sept. 01--One of the original hangars at what used to be called Billings Municipal Airport is slated for demolition either this fall or next spring.
The hangar with bolted wooden beams inside was apparently constructed to house airplanes belonging to a private aviation company, Gillis Flying Service, after the original building, Hangar No. 1, burned down in February 1948.
Today, the airport renamed Billings Logan International Airport needs more parking, so the hangar has to go, said Tom Binford, director of aviation and transit.
"We canceled the ground lease on the hangar that Edwards (Jet Center) owns," he said. "We're going to take ownership, tear it down and put auto parking there."
All the land at the airport is owned by the city of Billings and private companies lease their sites from the aviation department.
The hangar project has been on a back burner while the airport staff completed a six-week resurfacing of its two-mile main runway.
The land on which the hangar sits, to the east of the roundabout on U.S. Highway 3 at the airport's entrance, will eventually house 150 to 200 employee vehicles. Then the existing employee parking lot will be turned into parking for airport customers. That lot is just east of the short-term parking lot in front of the terminal.
Billings will need another airport parking garage in a few years, Binford said. But before starting that expansion, the city wants to pay off the airport revenue bonds it sold in the early 1990s to extensively remodel the terminal.
"So that when we issue another bond to build a parking structure, we're not making two bond payments at the same time," he said.
Historian Kevin Kooistra of the Western Heritage Center is documenting the hangar's history for the Yellowstone Historic Preservation Board. He suggested the airport keep the hangar, a symbol of early aviation in Billings.
"It's out of our power to try to save the building," Kooistra said, because it is well outside the historic district along Montana and Minnesota avenues. "But, unless the building is unstable or something, it seems like a no-brainer to let the employees park inside."
That idea won't work, Binford said, because the airport will get more parking spaces with the hangar gone.
Other than some asbestos assessment, there's no immediate work planned.
"If we get to it this fall, fine," Binford said. "If we aren't ready to proceed with the parking, we'll wait until spring."
Meanwhile, Binford said the runway resurfacing, which needs to be done about every 15 years, timed out well with all the wildfires because the work was finished when the Rock Creek Fire south of Red Lodge took off.
"It's nice. A lot of aerial tankers and firefighters are using the airport," he said, especially last week.
Copyright 2013 - Billings Gazette, Mont.
