Central Illinois Regional Airport receives $12 million federal grant

A total of $12,090,546 was awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to the Central Illinois Regional Airport (CIRA) in Bloomington-Normal.

The grant will fund the second stage of the airport’s rehabilitation project, which will be heavily infrastructure focused. 

The staff at CIRA are aiming to improve the overall layout of the airport, a constant ongoing process in need of constant supervision.

Derek Snyder, Deputy Executive Director of CIRA, talked about what the airport has done for rehabilitation in the past.

“So airport rehabilitation projects are always ongoing,” Snyder said. “Last year and also this year, we were rehabbing part of the short term parking lot. We (also) did the front driveway, the terminal entrance into the airport, so stuff is constantly being rehabbed. The infrastructure at the airport is at various stages in its age.”

The CIRA staff was heavily involved with all the construction going on around the airfield.

“Airport staff from administrative to operations and maintenance folks were engaged daily with the contractors, the consultants and the engineers to make sure that the project runs smoothly at the end of the day,” Snyder said. “The airport authority is solely responsible for everything that goes on here and including construction, projects and construction safety at airports is paramount.”

There are confirmed to be more projects in the upcoming future, small and big. 

CIRA is expected to spend over $24 million between all projects, with both stages costing a little over $12 million each.

“Likely next year, we’ll see construction of Route 9 and Airport Rd, right now, that’s a three-way intersection, Snyder said. We’re going to turn that into a four-way intersection and build a new, I think it’s like 1,200 feet, it’s going to be a new dedicated cargo road that will take these current cargo to FedEx traffic. So after this road is constructed, we’ll have a dedicated road so it’s a huge safety improvement in efficiency of the airports.”

The second stage of the CIRA rehabilitation plan will begin shortly.

According to Carl Olson, CIRA Executive Director, the project is expected to start in May 2027 and the completion date will be November 2027.