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Lloyd Melton works to disassemble the old terminal and hanger at the Barwick LaFayette Airport on Wednesday, making way for new buildings.Photo by John Rawlston.
LaFAYETTE, Ga. — An airport terminal here is being put out to pasture — literally.
The city is taking down its steel-sided hangar and terminal building at Barwick-LaFayette Airport to make way for a new, brick terminal.
City officials called Walker County cattle farmer Keith Thomas and said he could have the old structure's steel siding.
"We're going to build a hay shed out of it," Thomas said Wednesday, after he and a crew spent two days unscrewing the siding and stacking it on a trailer.
The building's iron frame won't go to waste, either.
"We're going to save it and reuse it," said City Maintenance Supervisor Lloyd Melton.
With help from Walker County Jail inmates, it should take about five days to disassemble the carefully numbered frame so it later can be reassembled and "reskinned" with metal siding and used as a hangar elsewhere at the airport, Melton said.
Airport Manager Phil Shelton said the old terminal was showing its age. The new terminal will be "something nicer."
"We hope, of course, that it will bring in some more business," Shelton said.
Airport operator Cecil Whaley said commercial flights have fallen off. He described the airport's traffic as "anywhere from none to eight or 10 planes a day."
LaFayette got a OneGeorgia Equity Fund grant for $500,000 to build the new terminal. The city has to make a local match of $200,000 in cash or in-kind work.
Tim Omarzu covers Catoosa and Walker counties for the Times Free Press. Omarzu is a longtime journalist who has worked as a reporter and editor at daily and weekly newspapers in Michigan, Nevada and California. Stories he's covered include crime in blighted parts of metro Detroit and Reno, Nev.; environmental activists tree-sitting in California's Sierra Nevada foothills; attempts by the Michigan Militia to take over a township¹s government in northern Michigan. A native of Michigan, ...
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