The Wood County Regional Airport is taking off with expansion plans.

The airport authority plans to add hangars and expand and repave its north/south runway.

At the Sept. 12 Wood County Commissioners meeting, Jamie Weidner, president of the Wood County Regional Airport Authority, presented the planned projects.

“We’re taking the runway out to 3,200 feet,” he said, adding it is currently at 2,628 feet.

The runway also will be widened to 60 feet from 50 feet and expanded north. The approach from the south will be moved further away from Poe Road to improve obstruction clearance.

“It’ll allow larger business-type aircraft to come in that currently may shy away and go up to Toledo Express,” Weidner said.

The Federal Aviation Administration is involved, providing most of the funds for the $6.263 million runway project.

Weidner said he is waiting for grant approval from the FAA, which should be for $5,501,700. The state is providing 5% and the airport authority is responsible for the remaining 5%, which is estimated at $305,650.

There are plans to add two hangars at the Bowling Green Flight Center, which currently has two.

“We’re kind of tapped out. We have a lot of aircraft on order,” Weidner said.

The new hangars can hold 16 new aircraft.

There are currently 19 aircraft on site and that number is expected to jump to 33 by the end of 2025, he said.

The flight program will expand from 400 students to 600, he added.

Weidner said he’d like to start the design for the flight center hangars as soon as possible with a target completion date in the fourth quarter of 2024 to meet the need to store the aircraft that have been ordered.

As the corridor from Perrysburg to Bowling Green fills in, there will be more companies arriving from out of town. The airport, which is landlocked, needs to be built out as much as possible to support larger aircraft, he said.

While many of the projects in the authority’s 10-year plan have been completed, some remain.

“We are never done. Once you put pavement down, you have to maintain it so that’s another project,” Weidner said.

He said the east/west runway needs to be repaved and lengthened to 4,700 feet, with work planned in 2026 or 2027.

“There’s always some work and those are just the runways. We’ve also got a lot of aprons out there that need work. That’s a substantial amount of pavement,” Weidner said.

He asked commissioners for $227,524 to cover the projected cash deficit for the runway project.

County Administrator Carri Stanley said she will research former county contributions to the airport and discuss financial assistance from the city.