Business View Magazine Feb 2023

225 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 2 type of community you entered is progressive and forward-thinking. Our community wants to attract others that share that sentiment.” Infrastructure projects at the airport that have also served the overall theme of growth and improvement over the last few months include expanding the parking lot, which before the pandemic was overflowing. They have started phase one of a multiphase project, relocating the entrance drive and then adding 300 spaces to the economy lot. The idea is that this phase will set the stage to construct two further expansions. The board is also looking at a couple of internal, and external terminal projects such as upgraded wiring and plumbing. A lot of the money for these projects will come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. Next summer will see an airfield project to replace some lighting and the main cable to the taxiways. “While they haven’t technically broken ground,” says Hahn. “Our next big construction project will be coming this spring and that is a new maintenance facility. Our previous maintenance building was cut off from the terminal and is five EVANSV I LLE REGIONAL A I RPORT miles away from us around the perimeter road.” “We are relocating for convenience and safety, as well as to make us feel like more of a team. Our old building is also 50-60 years old. It’s old enough that we ran out of places to store equipment, but also, we couldn’t get the size of equipment that we should have. For winter operations we should have bigger, wider blowers,” he elaborates. “We should have had wider brooms and better equipment to remove snow and ice, but we just didn’t have a place to put them. This will mean better access to the airfield, better access just from an employee communication and relationship standpoint and gives us the ability to house many more and larger pieces of snow removal equipment.” All of this is done in conjunction with the community to work together to grow the region. EVV actively engages with the Evansville Chamber of Commerce, the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership, the Convention Center, and the Visitor’s Bureau. The town has done a lot recently to promote sports tourism to the area, which has been a boon to the airport in terms of travel, for example, and it is in planning