Aviation View | April 2021

59 AVIATION VIEW APRIL 2021 and heat units across North America. Ashley Furniture is also headquartered just north of La Crosse. Add to that the three universities and colleges in the city – the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse, Viterbo University, and Western Technical College – and it amounts to a lot of business travel. “Nearly a quarter of our passengers and a sizable portion of our general aviation business is Department of Defense driven,” says Turner. “Fort McCoy is located approximately 30 miles east of our airport. Since the Fort is the Army’s Total Force Training Facility that customizes training for all branches of the military and some foreign country training and non-military training, as well, it is a big economic driver in our community and something important to our success.” The airport just wrapped up two substantial projects at the end of summer 2020. One was to re-pave most of the taxi lanes in and around the general aviation hangars. Turner notes, “We also just finished expanding the terminal LA CROSSE REGIONAL A I RPORT apron to better position ourselves for more growth in the future. The terminal expansions to the south and the east will allow us to provide adequate parking and utilization of the terminal by the new generation of aircraft that airlines are picking up. Next on tap is likely the resurfacing of runway 13/31, and we also have an acquisition of a new aircraft rescue firefighting vehicle coming up in the next year or two. Mathy Construction Company was the general contractor on the taxi lane project and a subcontractor on the concrete project for the terminal apron. They’ve done a lot of our construction work out here and they’re a pretty phenomenal contractor to work with. They get the job done and they do it well.” Overall, construction in 2020 amounted to about $3.5 million of work. The La Crosse Airport team has also begun to look at green initiatives, having converted all the lighting on the field and in the terminal to LED, which is both environmentally friendly and cost-effective. Down the road, they hope