Renovations To Begin San Marcos Municipal Airport

San Marcos City Council unanimously approved the use of $697,050 of the city’s budget as part of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airport improvement plan at its Nov. 5 meeting. The project will receive additional state and federal funds to bring the project’s total budget to $5.7 million and includes improvements to runway 13/31 and avionics equipment, said Daniel Benson, airport planner for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Aviation Division. The start-of-construction date is to be determined.

“Runway 13/31 is being overlaid and will be completely redone,” said Cassidy Berenato, director of marketing for Texas Aviation Partners, the company charged with managing the airport. “They’ll dig it up and replace it. Runway 13/31 is in pretty bad condition now.”

Benson said additional renovations will be made with the runway repaving. 

“We are replacing what is called a medium-intensity runway light (MIRL),” Benson said. “We are taking out some FAA-loaned equipment and installing new city-owned Precision Approach Path Indicators (PAPI). We’re getting two new Precision Approach Path Indicators, a navigational aid for pilots to use when they’re landing.”

The indicators have “special lights” that alert the pilots if they’re too high or low when coming in to land, he said.

Runway 13/31 serves a unique purpose at the airport, Berenato said. The runway attracts much of the airport’s traffic, business and revenue.

“Runaway 13/31 is one of our most used runways,” Berenato said. “It has an Instrument Landing System (ILS), which means that aircraft can pretty much land in any kind of weather. All runways have GPS, but the ILS is a very sophisticated piece of equipment that pilots can use.”

The ILS serves an important role in attracting pilot training companies, she said.

“Since we do have the ILS, which is a really great feature to have since we’re a smaller airport, we have a lot of flight schools in the area that actually bring their students to utilize our airport for training operations as well,” Berenato said. “We have a lot of those pilot features that other airports don’t have without the congestion of Bergstrom and other large airports.”

Pilot training represents only a fraction of the commercial activity at the airport, she said.

“We have 12 businesses at the airport: aircraft mechanics that specialize in engine repair, people who specialize in avionics work, paint shops (and) two flight schools on the field,” Berenato said.

Berenato said the airport collects nearly $360,000 in rental revenue for the city each year.

“The airport has seen steady growth since 2009,” Benson said. “They are seeing increased business jet activity at the airport. They are trying to draw that type of business to the airport by marketing from the city’s side.”

Future plans for renovations are currently in the works, Berenato said.

The airport occupies 1,300 acres, the largest city-owned parcel of land open for development, she said.

“Texas Aviation Partners just completed a business development plan for the airport, which focuses on that three to five-year short-term window,” Berenato said. “The focus really was on recruitment of businesses since we are between San Antonio and Austin. We’re at a really strategic location.

Jon Wilcox  is a news reporter ffrom the Uuniversity Star where this sstory originally published. It is reprinted here through a news partnership be tween the University Star and the San Marcos Corridor News | @CorridorNews