The Gulf Shores City Council gave the airport authority permission to move forward with a grant application with the FAA to get $5 million to build a passenger terminal. The goal is to have the terminal completed by summer of 2025.

“The airport was one of 144 airports nationwide to receive a grant for our airport terminal program,” City Administrator Jon Walker said. “The airport authority did receive $5 million that does require a match. As part of that the airport did solicit bids for this terminal project and at a meeting last week, they did open those bids and subsequently awarded the bid two days later to a Persons Services Corp.”

An item to accept the grant and required matching funds was added to the council’s June 10 regular session meeting and passed unanimously.

“That was subject to approval by the city council for the project and also the city making available up to $3 million for the project as a loan from the city to the authority for the completion of that project,” Walker said. “What we have here today is a resolution that would approve and confirm the airport authority’s execution of that contract for the airport terminal as well as authorizing a loan of up to $3 million for that project.”

Councilmen Jason Dyken and Joe Garris sit on the airport authority board and both praised the hard work getting the grant process completed.

“This comes after a lot of hard work by the staff over at the airport,” Garris said. “Congratulations to them and all the hours they’ve put in because I know it’s been some back and forth getting this thing tweaked. We had a couple of staff members tweak this building down to where we can afford it. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a big thing for Gulf Shores to get this terminal in.”

Dyken said the effort has taken nearly 10 years and the efforts of employees and elected officials played a big role in the successful effort to get a passenger terminal.

“I would just add it’s been a process,” Dyken said. “We’ve had starts and stops, redesigns and reevaluation and strategic partners and then losing strategic partners. It’s been a long path but I think we finally got to a place where we have a very viable building that can be built and is affordable and should provide an opportunity to capture some airlines and begin having commercial service here. This is a good step and a good result and looking forward to getting some construction going on out there.”

The authority is planning a groundbreaking in August or September.