Runway reconstruction will keep Lake in the Hills Airport closed to planes until October

Shaw Local News Network

Delayed by a week, reconstruction of the runway at Lake in the Hills Airport is expected to wrap up in early to mid-October, pushing back slightly the schedule officials originally laid out.

The work, totaling about $2.6 million, will see the facility's 3,800-foot runway widened from 50 feet to 75 feet, Airport Manager Michael Peranich said. As a result of the work, the airport will be temporarily inaccessible to planes.

The work requires removing everything down to the base rock of the runway and replacing it, Peranich said. Because the project means the airport's closure, keeping the timeline on track is crucial.

"When you shut down a single-runway airport, you force all of the people who are based here ... to either find another airport or hunker down for the next two months," Peranich said. "We're wanting to limit it to two months."

Construction was scheduled to begin Aug. 1, but the start was delayed until Aug. 8 after some environmental concerns had to be dealt with, Peranich said.

Other work includes grading at the end of the runway and bringing in a different type of dirt or base material there so that if a plane has an emergency landing or goes beyond the runway, the area can sustain the aircraft.

The area will then be covered with grass, Peranich said. Some grading work was done in 2016, but it was only partial and wear and tear since has made an update necessary.

The cost of the project will be covered almost entirely by federal funds made available through pandemic relief measures. The village is picking up the rest of the tab, Peranich said, which amounts to about 0.5% of the total.

"It's kind of the luck of the draw," he said. "We procrastinated just long enough to get lucky."

Widening the runway will allow the airport to better meet standards set by the Federal Aviation Administration, Peranich said. It also will give pilots, particularly those learning, more room to land safely.

"We're bringing ourselves up to the latest design standards," Peranich said. "It's going to make a big difference for a lot of the pilots out here."

The last project completed at the airport, in 2016, was the construction of a full-length taxiway, Peranich said. That too was done to catch up with safety standards.

Lake in the Hills Airport has the fifth most aircrafts parked at its facility in the state, Peranich said, with 117 based out of it. It sees a traffic count of roughly 34,000 operations per year.

The airport is owned and operated by the village and is run within its public works department.