OCEAN CITY – The rehabilitation of the north-south runway at the Ocean City Municipal Airport is moving forward this week after town officials on Tuesday approved a contract for the design of the roughly $2.8 million project.
The Mayor and Council on Tuesday approved an engineering services contract with Delta Aviation for the design phase of the rehabilitation of the north-south runway at the municipal airport. The planned improvements include milling down the existing surface of the runway, sealing cracks and other damages and replacing the surface with new pavement to mitigate age and weather-related distresses over the years.
The project also includes installing new lighting and fixtures along the runway and its surrounding safety areas in addition to new signage. Finally, the project includes the installation of about 14,000 linear feet of wildlife fencing about 12 feet high along the perimeter of the north-south runway.
The entire project is expected to come in around $2.8 million when completed, although the scope of the contract approved by the Mayor and Council on Tuesday includes about $400,000 of the work, roughly $100,000 of which was already approved by the town’s elected officials in June for a pavement evaluation study to determine the scope of the runway rehabilitation project.
With the pavement evaluation study complete, Ocean City Public Works Director Hal Adkins appeared before the council on Tuesday seeking approval for the contract of the next phase, which includes the design of the runway project.
Adkins told the Mayor and Council on Monday the town’s partners in the project, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Maryland Aviation Administration (MAA) had already signed off on their funding contribution to the Ocean City Airport north-south runway rehabilitation project. The state and federal partners will fund about 95 percent of the contracted work, leaving the town’s share about $10,000, which was planned for in the current fiscal year budget.
The runway rehabilitation project was proposed after the town abandoned a long-range plan to lengthen the runways at the 40-year-old municipal airport. Once the town decided to stick with the current configuration of runways at the airport, the decision was made to repair and rehabilitate the existing runways with the FAA and MAA footing much of the bill.