Meadows Field Airport is set to receive a nearly $2 million federal grant as officials plan for long-term growth and upgrades at the Bakersfield airport.<\/p>\n
The Kern County Board of Supervisors approved a $1.9 million Federal Aviation Administration grant for Meadows Field, with airport leaders saying the money will fund a 20-year master plan designed to help the airport keep up with the needs of both staff and travelers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis airport has been underutilized and we have realized that potential. We\u2019re moving the right direction,\u201d Kern County Supervisor Jeff Flores said.<\/p>\n
Airport Director Bill LaManque said the master plan will guide improvements across the facility, including upgrades to the airport\u2019s public address system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to upgrade our entire PA system to make it like an airport-wide thing and we are planning to do that,\u201d Lamanque said.<\/p>\n
LaManque also told county supervisors the airport continues to grow after what he described as a record-breaking summer. The airport is expecting to fill 30,000 seats in October, according to his presentation.<\/p>\n
To keep pace, Meadows Field has begun a project to add 120 new parking spaces. Officials said the 20-year master plan includes an airport layout plan, additional airline services and \u201cemerging technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditional airline service and smart infrastructure upgrades don\u2019t just improve the airport. These things improve the quality of life for Kern County residents and serve as an economic engine by creating jobs and making it easier to do business here,\u201dLaManque said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meadows Field Airport is set to receive a nearly $2 million federal grant as officials plan for long-term…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-471349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}