City-parish gets $1 million grant for access roads

The city-parish has been awarded a $1 million federal grant to build industrial access roads for a new Aviation Business Park at Baton Rouge Metro Airport. The grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce requires the city-parish to put up a $479,000 match that will cover upgrading an existing roadway, building an addition and moving a remote transmitter receiver facility. Plans are to start construction in the spring and the work should take about nine months, says Jim Caldwell, marketing and air service manager for the airport. The Aviation Business Park would be located on 300 acres off Blount Road on the northern edge of the airport. Caldwell says the grant is a “very preliminary step” toward building the business park. A design team is planning the first building in the park, a 51,000-square-foot national preparedness center. The center could serve as an emergency operations center for various federal agencies. Caldwell says the plan is to take construction bids on the first building in early 2010.—Timothy Boone