The City Council Thursday expedited acceptance of two state grants for modification of an interior security road at Barnes Regional Airport used by airport staff and members of the Air National Guard.
Finance Committee Chairman Richard E. Onofrey requested immediate consideration on the grants, one for $570,000 and the other for $1,476,000, on behalf of Airport Manager Brian Barnes, to allow the project, which has already begun, to proceed expeditiously this summer.
An internal security road currently exists, but is being relocated due to the $20 million expansion of the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. aircraft service facility at Barnes Regional Airport, because it passes directly through the site of the Gulfstream project.
Gulfstream is expanding its facilities at the airport to service two new corporate airframes, the G-650 and the G-280, both of which are currently entering production. Gulfstream Aerospace Service Corporation signed a 50-year lease, with an option for a second 50 years, for about 10 acres of city-owned land at the airport. Gulfstream is planning to hire an additional 100 employees when construction is completed, bringing its current labor force to about 225 staff members.
The facility will have a 75,000-square-foot hangar to service the corporate jets, with an administrative space wrapped around the north and east faces of the hanger. Gulfstream conducted a ground breaking ceremony for that facility on May 11, 2012.
City Advancement Officer Jeff Daley said just prior to the groundbreaking that the city’s plan was to relocate the access road at the Gulfstream site to allow construction of the new facilities to begin as quickly as possible. then complete the interior security road effort.
“That was always the plan, to do the road relocation out of the Gulfstream site first,” Daley said.
Relocation of the interior access road is funded through the grant awarded by the Massachusetts Aeronautic Commission, a division of the state Department of Transportation.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik also requested council approval of land takings and easements related to reconstruction of an exterior road, which will be funded through a different state agency.
The city has been qualified for a separate grant of $2 million from the Executive Office of Development & Housing to reconstruct the exterior access road, Airport Industrial Road. That project is being funded through the Massworks Infrastructure Program. Daley said that project is still in the engineering stage, but that he anticipates the design and permitting stage will be completed this summer, with reconstruction projected to begin by early fall and be completed next spring.
The road project, to be completed with a $2 million state economic development grant, will service a proposed industrial park on land currently owned by the Airport Commission. The current access road between North Road and Elise Street, where there are a number of industrial and aviation-related tenants including Gulfstream, is a hodge-podge of street fragments, including two segments of Apremont Way, and a segment of Old Stage Way.
“The current road does not conform to the city’s requirements for industrial park road,” Daley said at a January meeting of the Westfield Redevelopment Authority, which will have a role in development of an industrial park. The WRA’s goal is to complete the road project and create between 10 and 12 industrial lots that will be the city’s newest industrial park.
Knapik requested that the council approve two orders of taking, and one order of taking for a permanent easement. Knapik also requested three orders of appropriation with regard to the airport industrial road improvement project.
Onofrey requested that the mayor’s communication be separated into two components, with the land takings sent to the Legislative & Ordinance Committee, while the appropriations be sent to the Finance Committee.
The $2 million state grant will be used for the final engineering plans and bid documents, permits and construction. The tentative timeline is to complete the surveying work in the spring, followed by a period of two to four weeks to secure the property through eminent domain, the process Knapik initiated Thursday, followed by the engineering phase.
