BY TIMOTHY LA ROCHE
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CLAREMONT – Work on a proposed café at the Claremont Municipal Airport will move forward after Planning Board members gave the project a preliminary go-ahead.
Project consultants outlined on Monday plans to construct a small restaurant at the airport, advancing a project that former-Fire Chief Richard Bergeron heralded as a way to attract more customers to the airport.
The café is part of the larger airport terminal reconstruction slated to begin this summer. The project would see the current terminal building demolished and rebuilt to a modern design standards.
The proposed café would sit in the terminal’s southernmost corner. Views from large windows would overlook the rolling landscape surrounding the airport, framing nearby mountains against the backdrop of the runway.
“The idea is that it’s an airplane structure with a lot of wood and metal,” Warren Street architect Zachary Brock said. “I think we wanted to give the feel that it’s related to airplanes.”
Bergeron pushed the project as a means to attract customers to the airport. Such simple amenities as a restaurant can be an attraction for pilots choosing between fueling stops, he said in a September interview.
Travel in an airplane is much quicker than traveling the same distance in a car. For instance, the distance from Claremont to the Glens Falls, NY municipal airport is about 65 miles — about 30 to 40 minutes in a single engine airplane. The same drive takes more than two hours.
The municipal airport is one of the only city departments that generates a profit through the sale of airplane gasoline to pilots. The airport’s 2017 budget totaled $89,778, but with $75,000 in projected revenue from the sale of gasoline and a $16,200 lease, the airport is expected to make $91,200 in revenue — a profit of $1,422.
As Bergeron noted during the May 18 budget hearing on the project, “it pays for itself.”
Final costs will be released following a competitive bidding process. The Federal Aviation Administration will pay 90 percent of the terminal reconstruction costs, with another five percent coming from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation. Claremont taxpayers will shoulder the remainder.
“It’s a good deal,” Stantec consultant Amy Gray said.
The cost of restaurant equipment is not tied to federal grant funding, however. Costs for a kitchen hood exhaust system and suppression system, cooking and refrigeration appliances and furniture are estimated at $100,000.
“The benefit is multifold, pilots that already use the airport will have greater reason to continue using it as they would have somewhere to get a meal,” City Manager Ryan McNutt said of the café proposal in a September email. “New pilots would be attracted to the airport because there would be a place to refresh and relax.”
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