Aviation View | April 2021

85 AVIATION VIEW APRIL 2021 WAUSAU DOWNTOWN A I RPORT traffic in late ‘50s. “We moved into the terminal in 1998 and have been operating out of it ever since,” says Chmiel, “but it’s time for an upgrade. So in 2021, we’re using our capital investment money from our GA entitlement funding from the FAA to come up with the architecture and design plan to remodel the terminal building to better represent our community. This is a forward-thinking community and there’s a lot of growth in the Wausau Metro area. It is a great place to live and we look at the airport as an off-ramp from the sky, so when people fly into Wausau their first impression should be a good one.” Wausau Downtown Airport is still seen as an important part of the community for so many reasons. A key factor in this over the past few years has been the flight school. Another great example is the airport’s long-time relationship with the Wausau Supply Company. Chmiel explains, “Our relationship with Wausau Supply Company began many years ago when the As the FBO, Wausau Flying Service has two contracts with the city: one is to manage the airport and the other is to provide services at the airport. Chmiel reports, “We’ve been doing that for almost 30 years which is a good long tenure, and about four years ago we renewed our contract for another 30 years. The airport has changed a lot over that time, and probably will change even more in the next 30. When we first started there were 30 T-hangars. Since that time, we’ve had another row built adding ten more T-hangars.” But the greatest area of growth has been in allowing private individuals to make the investment and build their own hangar on the airport. “We’ve had 16 hangars built that way,” says Chmiel, “which is a great advantage for the city because it doesn’t have to invest in the hangar space. It allows the individual to build exactly what they want with whatever amenities they need. When we first came up with the idea of using the west side for private hangar development, people shopped around and pretty much everybody that was building chose Morton Buildings hands down. There was just a sense of quality to what they constructed. It makes it so much better when you have a contractor who knows the area, knows what people want, and can deliver on that.” These private builds have been so popular that the airport created an “East Hangar Development Area” on unused land on the other side of the airport and installed a taxi lane to give hangar access to the runways. This is phase one, and by phase three they expect to have an additional 20 hangars on the field and perhaps enough income generated to offset the operating cost of the airport. There is a sense that general aviation fuels the airport, so to speak. Because of this, the City of Wausau rebuilt the terminal in 1998. At that time they were operating out of the original FBO building from the 1940s even though there was a terminal that had been built for commercial