Iowa’s Third Congressional District Representative Cindy Axne recently announced federal funding that’s making its way to Perry for projects at the airport. 

Axne announced a new $4,368,299 grant for the Perry Municipal Airport to extend Runway 14/32 to 5,500 feet in order to meet Federal Aviation Administration standards. The grant is part of the supplemental funding provided under the Consolidated Appropriations Act and American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson says the initial work is to reconstruct the initial 4,000 feet of runway before they will go in and extend the runway out to 5,500-feet. Peterson gives an update on the beginning stages of the project.

“Of the 4,000 feet I believe they are about 60-percent done with that dirt moving and grading. The weather looks really good to allow them to get some good work done and quite a bit of work done on that and then hopefully looking at paving into this fall and hopefully to pave the whole thing and get it to the point that it might be able to be usable yet this fall before the end of the year.”

Peterson tells Raccoon Valley Radio this has been on the docket to be completed for some time.

“Really exciting project, excited to finally get this going. It’s been one of those projects that has been on the frontlines for a number of years trying to get the funding together and we were finally able to get the funding.”

Peterson says they are excited to continue to move the project forward.