Work Begins to Reclaim Lost Runway at Lakewood NJ Airport

hi Steve Ryman here from the Lakewood uh Department of Economic Development and Lakewood airport I'm here with Matt Applegate who is our fixed Base operator and runs a number of services both managing the airport for us and running some businesses here um and today we're finally got started on our project to recapture some of the uh lost Runway here at the 24 end uh mentioned before we've had a displaced threshold if you look out towards the CP but on the runway there's some striping there that indicates the beginning of the usable portion of the runway the reason that that is impacted is a combination of factors over on this end some of them having to do with trees that need to get trimmed in the forested area near our industrial park and the bigger part of the project has been that the approach the flight approach has been impacted by a number of the utility poles at the entrance to the airport uh with FAA support we're now going going to bury those services and conduits under the ground and in the last few days we've begun doing some of the trenching to allow for those services to be moved on the ground happily this should all be done and uh these Services ready to go uh before the weather really warms up and the activities start up here at the airport very excited about the fact that this will allow us with the growth of uh the businesses in the park we're seeing occupancy up in a significant way we have the expansion of the Parkway coming we think it's going to make it uh very very much attractive to large corporate players to come here and the ability to bring in more helicopter traffic and better small corporate Jets will actually be a great attraction point for us in addition to that Matt also runs uh the preeminent Banner towing service in the area so if you see planes flying overhead uh with advertisement uh that's Matt and Matt do you want to talk a little bit about some of the things that are going to be coming this sure we're with the uh extension of the runway we're also going to be uh uh getting some Charter service in here we'll be able to service the community a lot better with the larger aircraft um we also have the banner Towing operation out of here which we've been in business since 1963 um we can really help the production of all your local businesses get all the people out there we can advertise over the beaches over the ball clubs over towns you name it if they're outside we're going to get them for you that's great and of course right outside this fence is our viewing area hopefully in the future as we uh are able to finance uh the development of more and more facilities we'll have better and more exciting viewing but in the last few years we have seen more and more people coming out here with their families small day camps and uh School groups coming out here to see the operations and uh Matt and his staff are very uh user friendly so please come out and uh take advantage of the resources of Lakewood airport and we also have the uh rides available this summer we have the helicopter rides uh we have tail dragger rides and we also invite people to come out and we give a tours of the airport to small groups so feel free to give us a call out here and uh we'll set up a tour for you thank you that good