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Show County Plans to Begin Construction On Rebuilding of Canyonlands Field Bids for recoastruction work at : Canyonlands Field are to be opened on June 13, according to an announcement announce-ment this week by County Commission Chairman Mars Pope. The work at the airport air-port is estimated to cost about $400,000 with the Federal Fed-eral Aviation Administration picking up approximately SI per cent of the bill. The stati will' pay for half of the remaining re-maining cost and the Four Corners Regional Commission Commis-sion has committed some $74,000 for the project. Grand County will be required to pay approximately $10,000 of the' total bill. Construction is to begin between July 1 and 10 and is to take 60 working days to complete. At this time it I; not known if the working days will be counted as being be-ing from Monday through Friday or whether the project pro-ject is set for 60 calendar days. If the week is computed comput-ed from Monday through Friday, Fri-day, the airport could be closed until sometime in October. Oc-tober. The work will include a 4-inch 4-inch leveling course of a bituminous bi-tuminous surface and a 2-incn finishing course. It is anticipated antici-pated that a rubberized oil mixture similar to the one used just over a year ago will be applied. Included in the construction will be sections sec-tions about 20 feet wide along each side of the runway to be used to carry water away from the landing strip. The ramp and all portions of the airport which are currently surfaced, will also be covered cover-ed with the new mixture. Finally, the lights along the runway will be moved and replaced on the outside of the new drainage strips. Commissioner Pope stated this week that he realized this was going to be a bad time to shut down, but the surfacing cannot be done in cold or wet weather. "It is very inconvenient," the Commissioner Com-missioner stated, "however I don't see any way to avoid it." Frontier Airlines station manager Tim Mulville indicated indi-cated mat the airline would be shut down for all but the first two weeks of the construction. con-struction. During the time that the drainage area is being be-ing prepared, the commercial airline will continue to operate. oper-ate. After that two week period, per-iod, the station will be open and manned from 9 a.m. until un-til 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday. "The reservation num ber will still be open 24 hours a day," Mulville said. At this time some discussion discus-sion is being held of a possible pos-sible shuttle service for Frontier Fron-tier passengers from Grand Junction. Although this will not be provided by Frontier and must be arranged at the expense of the passenger, airport manager Royal Hol-tcr, Hol-tcr, owner of Hub-Air Flying Service, has indicated that he w.ll try to make arrangements arrange-ments to handle this on an en-call basis. During the lime that Frontier Fron-tier is not u-.ing the field, station personnel will take vacations and one man may possibly move to a temporary tempor-ary duty station somewhere in Wyoming or Montana. When the airport is reopened, Frontier Fron-tier v. ill return to the sam? schedule as it now maintains. main-tains. Mr. Mulville said that the new surfacing will probably give Frontier flight personnel person-nel a better attitude toward the community and should be of TJenefit to this area. He concluded by saying, "I don't think I'm being optimistic optim-istic wTien I say that in 3 or 4 years, if tourism increases as everyone expects Tt will, we will be able to support a 737 jet in here on a seasonal basis." |