Kinze Manufacturing to build hangar at Eastern Iowa Airport

Williamsburg-based Kinze Manufacturing is planning a corporate aircraft hangar at The Eastern Iowa Airport.

The Cedar Rapids Airport Commission on Monday approved a lease-purchase agreement for a 12,000-square-foot hangar. The agreement calls for Kinze to construct the facility and sell it to the airport for no more than $1.5 million.

The airport will lease the hangar to Kinze for an initial 25 years with two five-year optional extensions. It will be the fourth corporate hangar along with facilities owned by Alliant Energy, CRST and Rockwell Collins.

Don Swanson, airport director of finance and administration, said the Kinze facility will free up three T-hangars for lease to private aircraft owners. Swanson said there is a long waiting list for those facilities;

Marc Beltrame, a Kinze representative, said access is to aviation is an important business tool for Kinze.

'Many of our customers and dealers are located in small towns across the country,” Beltrame said. 'This will allow us to critically access them in a timely manner.”

Kinze owns a corporate plane at the airport and two other aircraft will be housed in the hangar. Beltrame said Kinze's full time corporate pilot, who is based at the company's headquarters in Williamsburg, also will have an office in the new airport hangar.

'We bring in a second pilot on a rotating basis because our corporate aircraft needs two pilots,” he said. 'This will give them quicker access to preflight the plane, check the weather and get everything ready for a trip.”

Beltrame said Kinze has ordered a building from Sukup Manufacturing of Sheffield, Iowa, and would like to get site preparation done this fall. He said the company will work with the airport to time project completion to coincide with construction of a taxiway extension to the hangar.

Swanson said a state grant will cover 85 percent of the cost of the taxiway extension, which cannot not exceed $382,075. The airport will pay the remaining 15 percent of the construction cost.

Swanson said the work on the extension will likely begin in the spring.