Doug Hale is high on Pine Bluff Grider Field Airport, in large part because the 50-year-old has long identified the facility as — for all practical purposes — being his home.
Hale, the airport’s popular manager and goodwill ambassador, boasts about the 850-acre site whenever possible. He enjoyed a captive audience Tuesday when the Rotary Club of Pine Bluff held its luncheon meeting in the renovated terminal’s conference room.
Hale, who lived in a house adjacent to the facility as a child and grew up working with his father in a family aircraft upholstery business there, related the latest “good news” to be received by the airport — approval for a $326,626 Federal Aviation Administration grant to finance apron upgrades. The grant is contingent on a 10-percent reimbursable ($32,666) municipal match, endorsed Monday by the city council. The Arkansas Department of Aeronautics will eventually compensate the city for its advance.
The apron work is part of a two-year, two-phase project.
Grider Field, which dates back more than 70 years ago and began as a World War II flight school, has experienced dramatic enhancements over the past few years with the improvement largely made possible with more than $3 million in grants. Last year, the terminal building was rededicated more than half a century after its original 1960 opening.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The airport is overseen by a six-member commission chaired by Michael Sizemore. Other members are Gerald Andrews, Joy Blankenship, Ken Johnson, Kirby Mouser and Leon Scallion.
Funded as a department of the city, the airport generates income from user leases and fuel sales.
Hale noted that the airport counts a number of corporate users, including Jefferson Regional Medical Center, Fred’s, Walmart, Evergreen Packaging, Union Pacific Railroad and the Army’s Pine Bluff Arsenal.
Although the facility lacks a commercial flying service, it receives hundreds of visitors each year with the Black Pilots Association of America’s annual Operation Skyhook fly-in and the Razorback Chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association’s yearly fly-in.
At the BPA event, children are given free plane rides. At the 2013 Operation Skyhook, a record 211 youngsters had their first rides.
Through the years, the airport has hosted many prominent figures as they stopped for Pine Bluff-area appearances or while en route to other destinations. Among those visitors were President Bill Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama and “The King” himself, Elvis Presley.