Spirit of St. Louis expanding infrastructure to 150 acres - St. Louis Business Journal:

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The infrastructure project, which will start this summer, will allow the airpor to lease parcels of land to private companieswfor maintenance, hangars or flight schools. "There's quites a bit of interest in thisproperty already. Companies are ready to make deals and build saidDick Hrabko, director of aviationj for St. Louis County. The projecgt will take 18 monthsto complete, Hrabko The infrastructure expansion is just one project in the workxs at the 1,500-acre Spirit of St. Louis Next month the airport will beginma $4.5 million project to upgradde its primary taxiway system from asphalg to concrete -- a move that will keep the runway viable for the next 25-3o years.
The project will add a 10-inch layee of concrete to the current asphaltpaths -- similar to the improvements the airport made to the main runway threes years ago, Hrabko said. The county boughtr the airport, which was buil in 1964, in 1980. The project also includesa the funding to overlay the shorter runwa y and taxiways withnew asphalt, Hrabko Funding for the two projects will come from airportg reserves and bonds as well as state and federap aviation grants, if approved. A recent study by the Missouri Departmenty of Transportation ranks Spirithird -- behind only Lambert-St.
Loui s International Airport and Kansas City InternationalAirport -- in economic impact of airports on the contributing $398.1 million to the There are 500 aircraft basesd at the airport, including about 125 corporate The attacks of Sept. 11, whicj precipitated a downturn in business atmost airports, had very littles effect on Spirit, Hrabko said. "We didn'rt suffer much," he said. "The only real impact was on flightr schools. We had three or four and now we're down to Revenue for the airporwas $18.5 million in 2004, up 12 percenrt from $16.5 million in 2003.
But increasing fuel costs force the airport's revenue higher without adding much to profit, Hrabko said. In 2004, the airport'se profit was $1.67 up from profit of $1.56 milliomn in 2003. , an aerial mappingg company, has grown along with Founded in 1964 by Oscar Hoffmanh andhis son, Earl Hoffmann, the company is headquarterex at the airport and is expanding its 17,000-square-foogt location by leasing another existint 8,500 square feet at the airport. In additio to offices, the companyg keeps five aircraftat Spirit. The company supplie s services to the Army Corps of state governments, the Missouri and Illinois departmentss of transportation, private engineers, Metropolitan St.
Louis Sewer District, counties, and the U.S. Department of Surdex's Defense Department room requires special clearance for employees anda "classifiedc room" kept under lock and key. Surdex'w 2005 revenue is expected to reachj $12.7 million, up from $11 million in 2004, accordinhg to Ron Hoffmann, Surdex's president and the third generatiob to runthe company. Earl Hoffmann remains the chairmanh of the boardfor Surdex. Revenue has risem even as the per-acre cost of mappinyg has droppedfrom $10 per acre to between $1 and $2, Ron Hoffmannn said, due to technology.
In fact, the companyg no longer calls what it does mapping butrather "supplyinbg geospatial data sets," he said. Surdex uses $500,000 camera s to take photos of property through the bottom of The company also measures the topography of the land using laser A global positioning system is used to within inches, where in the sky the aircraft was the minuts a photo was taken. The special cameras used are made in Germanyand Switzerland, and the companty is about to upgrade to a digitaol system in which each camera costs $1.4 million.
Ron Hoffmann is joinedr at Surdex by three brothers anda sister-in-law: Rick Hoffmann is vice president of business strategy, Randy Hoffmann is supervisorf of stereo compilation, and Russ Hoffmanmn and his wife, Lisa both work in engineering sales. The company employsx more than60 people.