Rosecrans breaks ground on new air traffic control tower
May 20—The long-awaited air traffic control tower project at Rosecrans Memorial Airport took flight on Monday.
The tower's renovations are propelling the complex, which was built in 1952, into a more modern era. The nearly $20 million in funding for the new tower's construction along with other infrastructure upgrades was approved by the St. Joseph City Council in March.
Julius Rice, airport manager, said it's a huge relief to finally have the project underway.
"This is really monumental. This whole process has been years in the making, lots of effort, late nights, stressful phone calls, all of that stuff," Rice said. "But to finally get to the day where we're flipping that dirt over, it's a tremendous feeling and a great relief all at the same time ... even though we still have the building ahead of us, just getting that started is a big thing."
The funding package for the project came from both the federal and state agencies, according to city documents from the council meeting on March 4.
Col. Barrett Golden also has the title of deputy commander of the 139th Airlift Wing. He said the new tower will be a huge advantage to the 241st Air Traffic Control Squadron on site at Rosecrans because of the equipment updates.
"It first and foremost comes down to a lot of quality of life capabilities. When you're in '50s era technology, you obviously you have dated heating systems, dated air conditioning systems ... your ability to utilize radios that are very dated, all present challenges," Golden said.
Golden said updates will allow for safer training missions for the 139th as pilots fly the C-130 aircraft on site. Upgrades will also decrease the amount of manpower needed for training exercises, including what he describes as landing on blacked-out runways.
"No lights whatsoever," Golden said. "In order to do that, we right now have to have airfield managers drive out there and cover lights and do things like that. This incurs a significant amount of manpower for us to train to do our mission. With this added technology, they can just hit a switch and turn off all the lights on the airfield, or perhaps configure it for a simulation of a short field landing."
Along with construction on a new tower, construction of a new terminal building is also underway to house airport offices, the restaurant and the lobby area. This project should be completed by the end of the year.
Rice said the estimated timeline for the tower project is one-and-a-half to two years.
"(First) the building will go up ... then people may think that it's close to being done. But as you can imagine, an air traffic control tower has lots of cables, lots of equipment and stuff that's got to go into it before it can be fully functional," Rice said.
Riley Funk can be reached at riley.funk@newspressnow.com.
