A roof replacement project will advance at the Ocean City Municipal Airport following approvals from the city council last week.
The Ocean City Municipal Airport is pictured.
File photo
Bethany Hooper, Associate Editor
A roof replacement project will move forward at the Ocean City Municipal Airport following approvals from the city council last week.
Last Tuesday, the Ocean City Council voted unanimously to appropriate $250,000 from the town’s capital reserve fund and to award a bid to Willow Construction for a roof replacement project at the airport. The decision comes more than two years after the roof at one of the airport’s large maintenance hangars was blown off in a summer storm.
“My goal tonight is to finally move forward,” Public Works Director Hal Adkins told the council this week.
In June of 2022, a storm blew through the area, destroying a maintenance hangar roof at the municipal airport. Adkins told officials this week that the hangar is currently covered by an old roof located underneath the damaged one.
“The roof that was ripped off was the second roof,” he explained.
In the two years since the incident, Adkins said temporary measures have been taken to patch the existing roof and fix the guttering until a new roof could be installed. He said the town also pursued payment through its insurance provider and had sought project bids from local contractors to complete the work.
“Soon after the event, we put a bid package together with a design to put back what was there,” he said. “The terminology that is used is in-kind, not betterment. The only betterment, dare you say that, would be the fact that we had to make the 1972 building code compliant.”
As the airport is located outside municipal limits, Adkins told the council the town must comply with county regulations in replacing the roof. He said the project has been made more complicated by the fact that the hangar is still occupied.
“Add to that, you have an active building with multiple tenants,” he said. “So therefore we have to work around them and around their offices. For example, in the second floor of that building, directly under the roof, is your skydiving operation. To reinforce the roof in accordance with the county’s wind loads and codes, we basically have to remove the entire ceiling within that office, a large portion of their HVAC system, and other things that are in the way to insert what are known as purlins up and into the roof structure, so that the new roof has something to be attached to.”
Adkins said Easton-based Willow Construction had submitted the lowest bid of $617,000 to replace the roof, and that insurance would provide $392,000 toward construction costs, leaving the town with a shortfall of roughly $225,000. He said he was seeking $250,000 to cover that shortfall, as well as any unanticipated costs.
“I rounded the numbers up to $250,000, out of the capital reserve fund, with the full intention that if we are lucky we don’t have to spend any of the additional $25,000,” he said.
Adkins said construction could begin as early as November. He said work must be completed by April, when business picks up at the airport.
“If it’s postponed, it’s postponed a whole other year,” he said. “And then most likely I really doubt Willow will hold the price for that much longer.”
After further discussion, the council voted 7-0 to provide $250,000 in supplemental funding from the capital reserve fund and to award the project to Willow Construction.