SIOUX LOOKOUT – A travel hub of the North is on track to get millions of dollars in upgrades.
A budget document presented to Sioux Lookout council details more than $5 million in proposed capital spending for the garage and terminal building at Sioux Lookout Airport (YXL).
The document says the garage project, which began in 2023 with preliminary design and cost estimates, is to address a shortage of “room for equipment storage and maintenance.”
The cost total for the garage upgrades is pegged at almost $4.8 million.
A federal Airports Capital Assistance Program grant will cover more than $2.1 million of that amount – if the city’s grant application is approved next month.
Funding for the rest of the project is designated to consist of $500,000 from the local airport improvement fee reserve fund and “long-term debt.”
The main work to be done in the terminal building is converting some of it into a secure hold room for passenger screening, at a cost of $410,000.
Other airport capital spending for 2024 includes purchase of a new pickup truck for an estimated $65,000 to replace the airport’s 2007 half-ton and replacement of “obsolete” security cameras.
The airport, which began operations in 1933 and was purchased by the municipality in 1974, has a 1,600-metre runway and Perimeter Aviation, Wasaya Airways, Bearskin Airlines and North Star Air among its business members.
Passenger traffic at the airpoirt in 2023 exceeded 137,000, much of it medical-related as First Nations members come to Sioux Lookout for health-care services.
