Aviation View | Volume 2, Issue 3

21 AVIATION VIEW VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3 be the golden age of expansion for Central Texas. “And here is the thing,” Wilson notes, “When you look at how busy it is, how much traffic you have to contend with, and all of the hassle of getting to Austin – well, you can get to us and fly out faster, even though we are a little further away. We have not been sleeping on the job or wasting our time with all of this happening around us, we are making sure we are perfectly poised to take advantage of this growth and become very successful.” In July, Killeen-Fort Hood Regional Airport will see the opening of a brand-new commercial hangar that the airport has built for CSI Aviation, a charter company. It is 16,000 square feet with 7500 square feet of office space. This will bring in over 20 jobs to the community. There are also plans to build a second hangar and to continue to expand the airport to the southwest, where there are some 80 acres of land the airport is acquiring from Fort Hood. The major infrastructure improvement for the coming year is a complete rehabilitation of the parallel taxiway. This $11 million project will see a complete resurfacing with mill and overlay, as well as new shoulders and lighting. “All along the Interstate 35 corridor that from Austin to Dallas, that is what is being called the new aerospace hub,” Roque reports. “We have SpaceX up in McGregor, which is just north, we have the Pflugerville underground drilling project, the Tesla Giga factory in Northeast Austin, so all of that innovation… that’s driving the economy right now and driving the growth. This is exactly why partnerships with the Chambers of Commerce and economic development corporations throughout our region are so important. We work with the Killeen Convention Centre and Tourism Bureau closely to see what is impacting our city directly and how we can support their work as they support us. We have been actively building all these partnerships at every level.” There is a strong push at the Central Texas K I LLEEN-FORT HOOD REGIONAL A I RPORT