By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
Airport Road west of Great Bend will be getting some much-needed improvements thanks to a grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation. The two-mile $800,000 resurfacing project is one of only 20 transportation construction projects selected in the state's cost-share program this fall. Airport Road is the primary connection to the Great Bend Airport and Industrial Park and the Great Bend Transload Facility.
Barry McManaman, Barton County Interim Administrator and County Engineer, said he is pleased to get the funding.
"The road is in need of being overlaid due to the increase in traffic out at the Great Bend Transload Facility and then the number of wind tower components that were hauled in and out of there,” McManaman noted. “We’re getting some rutting and some cracking in the road. KDOT was instrumental in getting the Transload Facility out there. We had made the application through KDOT thinking that they would be interested in helping us out. They’ve decided that they are, and we’re really appreciative of that.”
The state will pay 75 percent of the cost or $600,000. The remaining $200,000 will be split between Barton County and the City of Great Bend. McManaman explained why the project involves both local governments.
"It’s kind of a dual road,” McManaman said. “The county has maintained it, but we got to looking at the city limits lines when we originally started talking about needing to overlay that road. Making an application, we found out the city limits runs roughly down the middle of Airport Road. It’s actually to the east side of Airport Road so there’s probably a little bit more inside the city than there is in the county.”
McManaman said he wants to get the bidding process going as soon as possible and expects to get the project finished sometime next year.