MU Flight School Tops $20M List of Projects Planned at Yeager in 2020

More than $20 million worth of construction activity, including work on a new classroom building for Marshall University’s School of Aviation, will get underway this year at Charleston’s Yeager Airport.

The airport’s governing board voted Wednesday to award a contract to Pennsylvania-based architectural and engineering firm L.R. Kimball to design the new classroom building, to be located between Yeager’s general aviation operation and the 130th Airlift Wing’s hangar area.

The design is to be completed and put out to bid before the airport board’s May meeting, at which time the successful construction bidder will be identified. Construction is expected to begin in early July and be completed by August 2021, in time for the new building accommodate fall classes.

To expedite completion of the project, Marshall agreed to reimburse Yeager for L. R. Kimball’s $550,000 in design work, and then enter into an agreement with the airport to front construction costs, initially estimated to total about $6.5 million.

Other 2020 construction projects related to the new classroom complex include a $900,000 aircraft parking apron, expected to get underway next winter, and a $600,000 sewer line extension expected to begin taking shape in late fall.

Work expected to begin this spring at Yeager includes a $300,000 remodeling project for the passenger terminal’s restaurant, gift shop and cafe, followed by a summer construction boom that includes the $3 million first phase of a runway rehabilitation project; a new $2.2 million U.S. Customs and Border Protection building; a $5 million passenger terminal rehabilitation project; and an $850,000 apron lighting project adjacent to the main passenger terminal and the Capital Jet Service general aviation terminal.

Yeager’s effort to market itself as a staging site for airborne military training operations at an assortment of nearby inactive surface mines drew a Naval Special Warfare support unit to Charleston earlier this month, it was reported during Wednesday’s board meeting. After examining three training sites, the Navy SEALS group made arrangements to return to Yeager in March for 10 days of training.

During the first week in March, multiple Navy helicopter squadrons based in the Norfolk, Virginia, area, are scheduled to hold training operations in the area from a staging and refueling base at Yeager.

On Jan. 15, Yeager’s military customers included six Marine AV-B Harrier pilots, whose jump-jets were refueled while their engines were still running by specially trained members of the Capital Jet Service staff. The following day, three Marine CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters and a Marine C-130 cargo plane refueled at Capital Jet Service, and the 35 Marines aboard the aircraft spent the night in Charleston hotels.

Reach Rick Steelhammer at [email protected], 304-348-5169 or follow

@rsteelhammer on Twitter.

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