A delay due to the impact of wet weather this winter is causing a further extension of the closure of a roadway around Polk County’s airport as Cornelius Moore Field is extended out.

Airport Manager Chuck Beavers said he appreciates local residents and those who have previously utilized the roadway as a way to cut through to other areas for their patience with the road closure of Airport Loop Road at this time, citing the weather as the main cause for the continued delay in completing work.

Beavers explained that with truck traffic moving continuously through the area during times when workers can continue to build up the flat area needed for one end of the runway to be lengthened out to 5,000 feet when the project is completed, the need to keep the roadway closed to through traffic to avoid any accidents is still necessary.

He said the current weather delays from wet weather will likely keep this portion of the extension project going through until at most late February, keeping Airport Loop Road closed until then with the heavy trucks carrying fill dirt at a constant rate to build up enough flat ground for the 1,000 additional feet of the runway being added on.

“The extension project is moving towards a projected completion date of early April 2021,” he said in a message to Polk.Today.

The big project underway at the airport was proposed by former Governor Nathan Deal as one of a group of 11 around the state he wanted to be funded in 2018 during his final year of office, and after some debate and negotiation with the Polk County Commission and the state Department of Transportation got the project mainly covered by state and federal money with just over $1 million covered to extend the runway another 1,000 feet, along with a taxi-way at the far end of the runway to give space for planes to move without interfering with another coming in for landing or taking off.

You can learn more about the project in this November episode of Talking Points on Polk.Today.