St. Louis Regional Airport Is Valuable Community Asset, Prepares for Control Tower Replacement and Other Development Projects

By Carmelo Turdo

The Aero Experience continues our series on St. Louis area airport development following our coverage of the St. Louis Regional Freightway Second Annual Take Flight Forum in November. During the Forum, five airport directors and four aerospace industry leaders provided updates on their annual operations, capital investments, workforce development and the economic impact of their facilities. The over-arching theme of the program was maintaining a spirit of collaboration necessary to grow the aerospace services sector in the region while improving the infrastructure at each location. In this edition, we follow up on the current and future developments at St. Louis Regional Airport.

St. Louis Regional Airport, located northeast of St. Louis in the East Alton/Bethalto Illinois area, was represented at the Forum by Airport Director Daniel Adams. The Aero Experience recently visited with Adams and Assistant Airport Director Drake Blackwell at the airport's administrative offices before taking a tour of the field where we captured the images seen in this story. This new management team has taken an active role in leading numerous initiatives to improve the airport's value to aviation businesses, general aviation tenants and the local community. 

Daniel Adams and Drake Blackwell bring complimentary airport operations and management experience to their current roles. Adams is a St. Louis University Aviation Science graduate who started his career serving as an intern and then an airport maintenance employee at St. Louis Downtown Airport. He worked in airport operations at Augusta, GA Regional Airport for three years and Airport Operations Coordinator and Supervisor over a seven-year period at Columbus, OH Regional Airport. He returned to St. Louis as Airport Director for St. Louis Regional Airport in April of 2022. Drake Blackwell is an Airport Management and Operations graduate of Western Michigan University. A Jerseyville, IL native, he returned to the area to work at St. Louis-Lambert International Airport Operations and joined the St. Louis Regional Airport leadership team in September.

Assistant Airport Director Drake Blackwell

Airport Director Daniel Adams

Along with Adams and Blackwell, there are nine other full-time airport employees - seven cross-trained maintenance technicians/firefighters, providing 24/7 emergency services coverage, and two administrative professionals. Adams credits the success of the airport to the small but effective airport management team and the support received from the airport authority.

"The airport is operated by the St. Louis Regional Airport Authority, its own, stand-alone governing body," Adams told The Aero Experience. "We're represented by the taxing districts of the region - Bethalto, Wood River, East Alton, Alton and Madison County. We have a board of seven commissioners appointed from those five different governmental bodies, and those are the governing officials of the airport. I report up to the seven commissioners, and overall, a really good team. They have the best interests of the airport in their minds as well, and we've been able to get a lot done here in the last two years." 

"We have a small team, a dynamic workforce," Adams continued. He credits teamwork and a collaborative work environment for the success of his small staff. 

"Everyone here is great to get along with and welcoming," Blackwell added reflecting on his first few months on the job. He is enthusiastic about the airport's direction for the coming year.

Adams mentioned having several priorities when starting as Airport Director, two of which were to wrap up any open issues overlapping from the previous director and also to update equipment and capital assets, such as the trucks and snow plows shown below, to more efficiently service the airport. Having achieved those objectives, he and his staff are focusing on larger airport development projects, attracting a flight school and more flying clubs while supporting the West Star expansion. Informing the aviation community and the public about the airport's new era of growth is also critical to future success. 

"We're also working on having a new website designed and developed in the first half of this year," said Blackwell, who is leading that project. "It will be user friendly, visually appealing and include airport development highlights, meeting minutes and pilot information." 

St. Louis Regional Airport currently serves general aviation and corporate customers, providing over 1,500 jobs and generating an economic impact of $480M. Runways 11/29 (8,100' x 150') and 17/35 (6,500' x 100') are able to accommodate most types of civilian and military aircraft. Over one hundred T-Hangars are full with a waiting list. The Piasa Flying Club is very active, and an aerobatic box is available when coordinated with air traffic control on the field. The airport's largest tenant is West Star Aviation, who is currently expanding their aircraft maintenance and overhaul complex. 

"Last summer we completed a rehab project of our north-south runway [17-35]," Adams said. "All new asphalt, all new markings, all new LED lighting. It was about a five and a half million-dollar project that was completed. Great partners on the construction of it. Completed on time. This upcoming year,  we're looking to do a public parking lot project - repaving several parking lots on property here. We're looking at doing a T-hangar apron rehabilitation project - replacing a lot of the asphalt and drainage around some of the T-hangars. We're evaluating our current fuel farm." 

During our visit, we received some exciting news from the Director's Office. The FAA has chosen St. Louis Regional Airport as one of the first 31 recipients of the new Sustainable ATC Tower Design for regional airports. The new, scalable tower was chosen by the FAA in April of 2023, and those qualifying airports with towers operating at the end of their projected life span may break ground on new facilities as early as this year. 

(FAA graphic)

"The FAA is interested in a new control tower on site here to replace the existing control tower," Adams told The Aero Experience. "It's about forty-five feet tall currently. This new tower will be one hundred and twenty feet tall. The cab will be about double the size, four hundred square feet total. We're looking to put it out here at the center of the airport right where the F-4 is currently. We'll move the F-4 to a different spot. The FAA has shown a lot of interest in making us one of the first sites in the country for this new tower design." 

The projected time is the end of 2024. The current control tower will be decommissioned in 2026, and the FAA will return the ground to the airport. 

"It will be a new landmark, a new look for the airport," added Blackwell. "Something you can see from the road and look very nice and new."

(2 graphics above courtesy of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism)

Ground-breaking is nothing new at the airport these days, and another capital project is under construction. West Star Aviation is expanding their already impressive facility by adding Hangar 67 on the south apron. About 600 West Star employees currently work at the airport providing heavy maintenance and overhaul services on the most popular corporate jet aircraft in use today. 

West Star Aviation is not only looking for new employees, but they are also willing to train them for these jobs through their own West Star Aviation Academy now accepting applications for 25 full-time, paid Aircraft Maintenance Apprenticeship positions at St. Louis Regional Airport. The seven-and-a-half-month course provides training in airframe maintenance in cooperation with Southwestern Illinois College and Choose Aerospace. The first class will begin in mid-January, and the shop hangar workspace and maintenance training jet are shown below.

Airport and community development will be an on-going mission of the St. Louis Regional Airport Authority for many years to come. The airport owns significant tracts of land that may be developed for future aviation and commercial uses. 

"We have twenty-three hundred acres of property that the Airport Authority owns itself," Adams explained. "A lot of that is reserved for runways, taxiways hangar development - airport uses. But we also have a decent amount available for non-aviation, non-aeronautical development, whether that's a shopping center, restaurant, strip mall or whatever it might be. And we've been working closely with the Village of Bethalto, the chambers of commerce not just getting the word out on what we want to do with development but trying to bring in different businesses or companies to do a lot of that work for us in development."  

The airport's website provides the current development map with links describing each individual parcel as shown below. The general public may not be aware that there are two business parks that lease to non-aviation businesses providing goods and services to the community while generating revenue for the airport. 

"Being a team of eleven full-time employees, we rely on a lot of the community organizations - chambers of commerce, Riverbend Growth Association, Leadership Council of Southwestern Illinois, Madison County economic development partners," Adams said. "They're great voices for the airport. They speak for us, the good things about us, and try to bring those different businesses to us to build, grow or expand here." 

The most visible community outreach event is the annual September Wings-N-Wheels Fly-In and Car Show weekend.  On Saturday, large crowds gather to see a wide variety of aircraft on the apron and hundreds of cars on the grounds between the F-4 Phantom jet display and the main road. On Sunday, EAA Chapter 864 provides Young Eagle Flights. At last year's event, 279 youth aged 8-17 received a local flight in a general aviation aircraft. 

These are just the highlights of the recent developments at the airport, and much more will be accomplished in the near future. The Aero Experience thanks St. Louis Regional Airport Director Daniel Adams and Assistant Airport Director Drake Blackwell for providing an opportunity to showcase this valuable community asset.