{"id":26086,"date":"2024-08-17T21:47:44","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T03:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-municipal-airport-undergoing-renovations\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:33:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:33:41","slug":"cortez-municipal-airport-undergoing-renovations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-municipal-airport-undergoing-renovations\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez Municipal Airport undergoing renovations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Cortez Municipal Airport is in the process of renovating its parking lot and runway. (Jeremy Patton\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Cortez Municipal Airport is undergoing renovations while seeing an increase in traffic and planning for new development.<\/p>\n

The city broke ground on the parking lot project on July 8, said Airport Director Jeremy Patton.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were reconstructing, and also redesigned the parking lot to make it more efficient,\u201d Patton said. \u201cWe did a separate pickup and drop-off lane that is more efficient for people that are being picked up and dropped off.\u201d<\/p>\n

They are also rebuilding the main lot and the south pilot access road to the pilot access gate. The project will include new asphalt and \u201coptimizing the design so it\u2019s more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project is estimated to be done by mid-September.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parking lot was very old. The last major job on it was in the early \u201990s, so it\u2019s just been a Band-Aid fix over the years,\u201d Patton said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to make it start fresh, and then we\u2019ll be able to maintain a more modern parking lot from here on out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patton shared that their runway rehabilitation for 2025 is 95% done.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s basically a 4-inch mill and overlay of the entire runway to convert it into grooved asphalt,\u201d Patton said, adding that they will be going out to bid on that project in October. Construction is expected to take place in August 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are also adding about 4,000 square yards of apron expansion on the south apron, and at the same time, we\u2019re going to bid those jobs tougher, and they\u2019re basically going to go back to back in the fall of 2025 in construction,\u201d Patton said.<\/p>\n

They will be replacing all of the lighting from incandescent light bulbs to LED, as well as the vertical slope indicator that is \u201creally outdated,\u201d and a new control bolt for all electronics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we\u2019ll do a nice fresh seal coat and repaint our markings,\u201d Patton said.<\/p>\n

The runway work will help with the slight slope of the runway, but Patton shared that it is normal for runways to have a slope to them, as topography varies per location.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to try to address what we call a break-over,\u201d Patton said. There\u2019s a break-over in the runway that\u2019s kind of a hump, and the idea is to try to alleviate some of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patton shared that the renovations are needed to \u201cfacilitate our increasing operations,\u201d saying that air traffic is increasing, and there are many charter jets utilizing the airport. There has also even been \u201ca lot of interest\u201d in building hangars at the airport. Two private hangars are set to be built next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get charter jets in and out of here that are heavier than the airlines, and they have a higher impact on our runway. It\u2019s way past its life span,\u201d Patton said. \u201cWith the apron expansion, we can start adding more hangars down the south side of the airport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Renovations also include some \u201cpreviously ignored items\u201d like the airport\u2019s ADA compliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of sidewalks that weren\u2019t ADA, so we\u2019re rebuilding the main entrance into the terminal, new sidewalks, new curb and gutter, new ADA parking,\u201d Patton said.<\/p>\n

They are also changing the landscaping at the airport to be zeroscape, which is more suited to the desert to help preserve water and less maintenance to deal with.<\/p>\n

Patton emphasized that the current renovations are taking place for the future development of the airport.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the work is basically facilitating future development, and we\u2019re already seeing an increase in demand. We\u2019re seeing an increase in traffic,\u201d Patton said. \u201cThere\u2019s more and more operations in and out of the airport, as well as the commercial traveling public. We\u2019re getting more out of Utah, East Utah, Farmington and we\u2019re actually taking a lot of people from Durango because it\u2019s a cheaper and quicker option to get in and out of the airport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parking lot and runway projects have already begun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-26086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79219,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26086\/revisions\/79219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26086"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=26086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}