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Airport and hospital improvements target regional economy while bolstering established enterprises.
By John K. Woodruff, League staff
MENA-The low-hanging clouds shrouding the surrounding Ouachita Mountain Range tops and a light rain were quite apropos for the official dedication of a new inclement weather landing system and a huge, 6,000-foot runway for this Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport. Visitors and home folks were dry and warm at noon Oct. 6, however, in a brand new terminal and classroom building that were also dedicated as a 56-degree cool front blustered through. The runway, building and instrument landing system (ILS) cost? $16 million. The city's match was $1.7 million, Mena Clerk-Treasurer Regina Walker said. The noon Ceremonies finished just in time to get downtown to attend the 2 p.m. expansion ceremo-nies of the Mena Regional Health System hospital. The cost? $9 million. The city's part came from enacting a six-year, 1-cent sales tax in 1990 to keep the doors open and to save what was a "struggling" hospital, as described by Asa Hutchinson, former congressman who's seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Mayor Jerry Montgomery said that without that sales tax vote, which approached 80 percent in support from Mena residents, "we would not be here" for the celebration of the hospital expansion. The airport and hospital projects should give this thriving Polk County city of 5,637 less than 20 miles from the Oklahoma state line a economic boost. Speakers commended the hospital for striving for a regional approach. Its patients come from a 30- to 40-mile radius. The airport improvements will especially help the 19 airport-based companies, which have an annual payroll in excess of $5 million a year, keep on work schedules despite bad weather, in their repairing and working on all sizes of planes that come from around the nation and overseas. Airports at Dallas and Houston have nothing on the Mena airport with the new ILS, Airport Manager Dariel Baker said. Planes not only will have safe landings in inclement weather, but the new landing system will allow planes to land that in the past otherwise had to be diverted elsewhere for up to weeks at a time to await better landing conditions. "That problem has been eliminated," Baker said in an interview. When planes are down for repairs, that's lost revenue for the both the repairing companies and their customers, especially for commuter airlines, he said. The new runway has the base and length now to handily land even those big Boeing 727s airliners-those that seat six passengers across on each row. Planes needing repairs on their engines, structures, interiors, electrical and electronic equipment come from such places as France, Mexico, Canada, Ireland, Scotland and around this country in response, Baker said, to the "excellent reputation" stemming from "quality work and competitive pricing" of the airport's 19 businesses. The skills employed at the companies attract training opportunities for students from Mena's Rich Mountain Community College's Workforce Training Center and other area residents seeking a trade. Two classrooms accommodate the 12 or so students who attend classes in the new terminal building, complete with offices and a hangar space to work on aircraft. Students can step outside those classes to get hands-on training in riveting, engine building, sheet metal and other skills. And, once trained, they stick around, Baker said. Some young people who worked and trained at the companies, even at the high school level, are still there 15 to 20 years later. The hospital expansion was just the first of four phases of growth. This first part celebrated a new Emergency Department, expanded radiology, the new lobby with waiting areas and a new gift shop, registration and more parking . Vince DiFranco, hospital administrator, invited the crowd of more than 200 back in December for the next phase-the opening of an 11,000-square-foot wing for women's services, expanded and renovated laboratory, added space for blood bank and microbiology, reception areas, and added cafeteria facilities, among other work. Surgery, respiratory and pharmacy facility improvements wind up next spring.
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