Great news for the airport, thanks to some impressive long-term planning.

The Jackson County Airport will be able to complete their airport apron project years ahead of schedule, as soon as 2020-2021 in fact. Steve Shotwell, Chairman of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners, said, “Mr. Zapata (Jackson County Airport Manager Juan Zapata) applied and got some paperwork aligned and we’re looking at getting a three million dollar apron project done at the airport.” We asked if taxpayers would also foot the bill, and the Commissioner said that they planned for that too, “Two and a half percent is what we’re paying for this. $144,000 to leverage $3 million to do this project. The State of Michigan ponied up $144,000 also.” Chairman Shotwell said.

As for the planning? Shotwell said, “The reason why the Jackson is in line for this, is because the county board of commissioners planned ahead and put that money in the Airport Capital Fund over 10 years ago, and there’s some residual in there. We went to (the) FAA and showed it to them, and showed them where we were at, and getting ourselves aligned for this apron project, thinking it was going to be done in 3 to 5 years; they said they had a couple of airports in the US that hadn’t gotten their match money together yet, so they’re going to scoop all that up and come up to Michigan.”