Local pilot takes interest in county hangar

Seth Pinter, a private pilot who has had his plane housed at the Taylor County Airport for the past 10 years, has taken an interest in purchasing his own hangar to house his aircraft.

Pinter had planned to construct a shed this fall along Hwy 13, but due to scheduling conflicts, construction never started.

In the past year, Pinter has run out of storage in his current hangar, that he shares, and has offered to purchase his own hangar for $10,000 out of his own pocket.

The idea that Pinter proposed to the county airport committee on October 18 would be to buy the hangar for $10,000, fix it up himself and rent out the hangar which would also increase revenue for the airport, instead of having the hangar sitting empty.

“Buying this would prevent me from getting shuffled around to different hangars,” Pinter said.

The airport used the hangar to house a club plane until about 9 months ago when the club decided to have its plane housed elsewhere. Since then the hangar has been used minimally.

Pinter proposed to the board three options, the first was for him to buy it himself and fix up the hangar at his own expense to make the hangar heated along with a new hangar door. This would be more cost effective to the county because they would still get revenue from the rent money Pinter would pay monthly.

The second option would be for the county to buy the hangar, fix it up, and then Pinter would continue to pay rent to use it.

The third option, would be to measure up the size of the current hangar, and tape off the section of the same dimensions as of the hangar and have an agreement with the airport that he can continue to keep his current hangar but only have his property stored in that taped off area.

Committee Chairman Chuck Zenner, was not in favor of the third option to tape off a certain section of the hangar. He was however in favor of Pinter purchasing the hangar and fixing it up himself.

The issue with the hangar in question is in its current condition is that there is a two inch gap along the concrete and the base of the shed, from the frost heaving it up in the past. Pinter suggested putting boards along the inside of the shed along the exterior walls to keep the snow out this winter until he is able to get a new concrete truck slab poured.

The work that Pinter would like to invest in this hangar would be in the range of $25,000-$30,000. After the slab is poured a new hangar door would be installed because the current one is very hard to get closed due to the unevenness of the building. Board member Mark Hoffman said, “I would rather sell it to someone who is going to take care of it, and maintain it rather than leaving it empty to become more dilapidated.”

Fred Ebert said, “I would level out the current door to make it functional until a new door could be installed as well.”

The committee agreed that selling the hangar to Pinter would have the most beneficial effect to the county, and agreed to schedule a special meeting to set the selling price of the hangar, prior to the January meeting date.

In other business:

  Karl Kemper, Project Engineer for Becher and Hoppe, discussed with the board about different projects that could be done if the airport were to receive grant money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) grant. The first option was to construct a 40x120 3-bay group hangar, would be an estimated 1 million dollars to construct. The second option would be to build a 4-bay group hangar, which would cost an estimated 1.1-1.2 million dollars to build. Lastly to build a Gulf Stream hangar would cost around 2.5 million dollars. Kemper reminded the board that they could pick more than one project, not just settle on one project. He gave the example that if they build the Gulf Stream hangar, and the offer to pay $2,000/month to rent it out, along with the cost of utilities and insurance, it would take an estimated 11.5 years to get the loan of $250,000 paid. Kemper said “I tried to be fairly realistic with these estimates, but again until we have a commitment from Sierra Pacific, we are not able to assure these numbers are accurate.” Ebert added, “What is missing at the Taylor County Airport is an updated terminal to assure people that we are serious about aviation.”

  Kemper and Ebert are still working on submitting applications to receive funding to help offset the cost of the terminal buildings. The second of five rounds of funding has started.