Houlton airport awarded grant to fix aircraft parking

HOULTON – An allocation from the U.S. Department of Transportation has paved the way for the town to make some much-needed repairs at Houlton International Airport.

U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins announced earlier this week that the DOT had awarded $750,000 to the Houlton airport to reconstruct and expand aircraft parking areas.

The restoration is long overdue, Town Manager Douglas Hazlett said Thursday.

“That area is in awful shape,” he said. “So we are glad to have the money for this project. The asphalt in that area is cracking apart and it isn’t graded properly, so water is running into the hangar. These problems definitely need to be addressed.”

The town will have to provide some matching funds for the initiative. The money has been sitting in Houlton’s airport account for some time awaiting the start of the project.

This latest undertaking will enhance restoration work that town officials approved at the airport last year.

Town councilors voted last November to replace the 30-year-old roof on the hangar building at HIA. The decision came after both time and years of heavy rain ravaged the canopy of the 20,000-square-foot hangar. The facility, which houses approximately 24 planes, had been leaking badly for years.

The installation of the new roof cost $104,000.

Hazlett reaffirmed on Thursday his belief that the Houlton airport could be one of the area’s brightest economic baubles if properly maintained and marketed.

That belief was part of the reason the DOT allocated the money, according to the senators.

“It is absolutely essential to maintain Maine’s transportation infrastructure in order to keep the residents connected to people and economies all over the world,” Snowe and Collins said in a joint statement. “The most recent funding from the Department of Transportation has been provided to airports across the state for necessary upgrades and development.”

In total, the DOT granted more than $2.9 million in federal funding for transportation projects across Maine.

Hazlett said Thursday the project will go out to bid shortly and estimated the work would commence in May.