Faribault Airport Building Now Open Two Years After Tornado
In September 2018 multiple tornadoes struck the Faribault area with the main Municipal Airport building twisted like a pretzel. Metal was thrown across the road. Planes were flipped over. Tuesday night the Faribault City Council got to tour the new Arrival/Departure Building.
Mayor Kevin Voracek joined KDHL during the 8:05 report this morning, "It's primarily finished. They've got a few small details left to finish up on some signage on it but otherwise the arrival and departure building is open."
The Faribault Mayor sounded like a proud papa when he said, "The original proposal for it came in over 3 million dollars. Of course that wasn't in the budget so they had to go back to the drawing board."
Voracek indicated it was actually a blessing, "Because we came out of the situation with a concrete building rather than a steel building. I think the concrete is going to last us many more years and it looks very nice right next to Stein-Air."
The Joint Council Committee then held a meeting with the Airport Advisory Board and talked about the need to extend the current runway.
Voracek reported, "Currently in the master plan for the airport it's designed to be a 49 hundred foot runway and their recommendation is to turn it into a 51 hundred foot runway in the future. It'll take a lot of maneuvering to get it done because the runway actually has to turn about thirty degrees in order to make it fit correctly."
He added, "You think it's only 200 feet but it also involves a lot of air rights that we have to take care of and some wetlands that are in there and a lot of trees. The Airport Advisory Board is going to work on coming up with an idea and hopefully get some funding for it so it doesn't all have to come out of taxpayer pockets."
Voracek believes, "It'll be very useful because (currently) there's many corporations (jets) in Faribault that land in Owatonna and then come up here. We would like to have our businesses like Aldi, Crown Cork and Seal and some of those other ones landing their planes in Faribault."
NEVER FORGET: Images from 9/11 and the days after