We had a wonderful time Tuesday at the Runway 5/23 halfway there celebration! It’s a big job and we felt the community deserved an update on how things were coming. So, congressmen, commissioners, executives, economic development leaders, media, our staff and board of trustees donned bright yellow CAK safety vests and ventured out to the construction site.

I’ll tell ya’ it was quite a sight to behold. There were at least a dozen huge scrapers that can carry 27 yards of dirt at one time, zipping back and forth from the dig site to the runway’s end. We have to “build the hill” so to speak. The entire airfield is pretty much on a plateau, so any time we extend a runway; we’ve got to move lots of dirt to make the plateau bigger. In this case, we are moving 4,000,000 yards of fill. Check out pictures of the event on flickr.

We’ve got two more years to wrap this project up. We’ll pave the runway surface and taxiway, add an instrument landing system and lighting and displace about 600 feet at the north end.

Why celebrate the halfway mark you might ask? Well, this very well could be the last extension ever needed at CAK. We will have 8,200 feet when this is all said and done. That’s enough to get us anywhere in the continental US, most places in Mexico and the Caribbean. Plus, this extension project is the cornerstone of our CAK 2018 capital improvement plan, again, assuring our region that we will have top notch infrastructure for decades to come. It is really a blessing to work at a place where what we do, makes a difference in the life of our community.

So will we have a ¾ of the way there ceremony? Probably not, but get ready for one heck of a ribbon cutting in 2010!