New facility to support military coming to Port of Moses Lake
Marines set up camp during a training exercise at the Grant County International Airport in 2022. The Port of Moses Lake will be working on upgrades to the military exercise area this spring, paid for partly with a state low-interest loan.
FILE PHOTO
MOSES LAKE — The Port of Moses Lake has been awarded a $1.2 million loan from the state Community Aviation Revitalization Board to help pay for upgrades to the area used for military exercises. Kim DeTrolio, the port’s director of finance and administration, said the upgrades will include a building for use by military units on site.
“Normally, they take over our terminal and it’s not optimal for them or us,” DeTrolio said. “We’re hoping to be able to create this facility so that they can move across the field and it takes care of issues that we’ve had in this building.”
Total project cost is $2.8 million.
The port hosts military training exercises for all branches of the US military, from establishing a temporary base with little outside support to operations around an airport terminal. The training area needs upgrades, however, and the project will add a new building along the section of port property used for the exercises. The building will include meeting rooms, bathrooms and shower facilities, among other things.
Other improvements include improving and expanding tent sites in the military exercise area.
In other business, port commissioners agreed to a joint project with the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center to digitize and help preserve port archives. Superintendent Dollie Boyd said museum officials would be looking for grants to pay for the project.
Boyd said the port has an extensive collection of documents and pictures detailing its 60-year history, some of which she saw at the port’s anniversary celebration in November. Over the years, port employees have assembled a series of scrapbooks, some of which were on display in November.
“There’s a lot of great material in there,” Boyd said. “There are original photographs, letters, ephemera, things that we would hate to see go away. In their current condition, eventually they will deteriorate, especially the color photographs. (They are) particularly vulnerable.”
Boyd said it would require a lot of time and someone trained in proper archival techniques to do it right. There’s so much material, she said, that it would take two to three months.
“We don’t have the staff or the staff time to take that on currently, so it would mean hiring an intern,” Boyd said.
The project is contingent on the museum receiving a grant for it.