Lake in the Hills Airport off limits until October due to runway construction

Delayed by a week, construction on the runway at Lake in the Hills Airport is expected to wrap up in early to mid October, pushing back slightly the schedule officials had originally laid out.

The work, totaling about $2.6 million, will see the airport’s 3,800-foot runway reconstructed and widened from 50 feet to 75 feet, said the airport’s manager, Michael Peranich. As a result of the construction, the airport will be temporarily inaccessible to planes.

Work will include a complete reconstruction of the runway, which means removing everything down to the base rock and replacing it, Peranich said. Because the project means the airport’s closure, keeping the timeline of the project on track is crucial.

“When you shut down a single runway airport, you force all of the people who are based here … to either find another airport or hunker down for the next two months,” Peranich said. “We’re … wanting to limit it to two months.”

Construction was slated to begin Aug. 1, but ended up being delayed until Aug. 8 after some environmental concerns had to be dealt with, Peranich said. The project, expected to take two months to complete, will go until early to mid-October.

Other work being done includes grading at the end of the runway, which includes bringing in a different type of dirt or base material so that if a plane has an emergency landing or goes beyond the runway, the area can sustain the aircraft.

The area will then be covered with grass, Peranich said. Some grading work was last done in 2016, but it was only partial. That, combined with wear and tear over time, made an update necessary.

The project’s timing worked out well, Peranich said, as a lot of federal dollars had been made available due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project will be covered almost entirely by federal funds.

The village is picking up the rest of the tab, Peranich said, which amounts to about 0.5% of the total cost.

“It’s kind of the luck of the draw,” Peranich said. “We procrastinated just long enough to get lucky.”

Since the airport has a single runway, widening it will allow it to better meet standards set by the Federal Aviation Administration, Peranich said. The widening will give pilots, particularly those learning, more room to land safely.

“We’re bringing ourselves up to the latest design standards,” Peranich said. “It’s going to make a big difference for a lot of the pilots out here.”

While most road work takes place during the summer months, that is typically the busiest time for the airport, Peranich said. Part of that comes from students being out of school and using their time off to learn how to fly. July is the busiest month of the year for the airport.

Because of this, the airport wanted to allow the village and the businesses that operate out of the airport to take advantage of the busier months, Peranich said.

The last project completed at the airport, in 2016, was the construction of a full-length taxiway, Peranich said. That too was done to catch up with safety standards.

Lake in the Hills Airport has the fifth most aircrafts parked at its facility in the state, Peranich said, with 117 aircrafts based out of it. It sees a traffic count of roughly 34,000 operations per year.

The airport is owned and operated by the village and is run within its public works department.