Officials from the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids broke ground on a new $7.7 million operations center on Wednesday.
Airport officials say the new, nearly 12,000 square foot facility that will streamline and improve efficiencies for day-to-day management and become the “lifeline” of the airport.
Located on the east side of the airfield, the building will be accessible air-side and public-side, making it ideal to provide daily operations support and reachable during an emergency.
Lisa Carr is the airport’s Public Safety and Operations Director.
“The new operations center that we are breaking ground on today is designed to become the lifeline of the airport,” Carr said. “In addition to its daily functions, the new space will serve as an emergency operations center. When the EOC is activated, a cross section of functions come together to assess and address the situation at hand,” she said.
Carr said those functions include everything from police, fire and rescue, operations, maintenance, communications and other state and federal agencies.
Meanwhile the groundbreaking Wednesday is only phase one of construction. Officials say in phase two, the airport plans to expand the center to include its fire department permanently at the site.