If you are lucky enough to ride in — or pilot — a plane taking off from Kissimmee’s Gateway Airport, do something as soon as you are airborne — look down.
From that vantage point, you can see all the available space the city-run airport has to expand services and offerings.
Some of that expansion, in the works for some time, is coming to fruition, as the City of Kissimmee held a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday with Mach1 Aviation. The company is beginning construction of a 40,000 square foot hangar — the largest at the airport once built — that will eventually house high-end business aircraft and fill a need for larger aircraft storage space.
The hangar facility, which will have four hangar bays that will each have an office suite, is being built off Hoagland Boulevard on land directly behind Cirrus Aviation. That may be familiar to long-time residents as the former Warbird Air Museum and flight training facility.
City officials said construction should take 12-18 months. Mach1 will lease the property for an initial 30-year term, with an additional 10-year option.
In 2019, negotiations between the city and Mach1, a Quality Targeted Industry (QTI) company, making it eligible for city economic development incentives. Those incentives are performance-based, so Mach1 Aviation must meet certain employment benchmarks for the incentives to kick in.
Mach1 owner and operator — and a general aviation pilot himself — Fred Machado said he never wavered from coming to Kissimmee during his talks with the city,
“We’ve been working diligently with the city staff, and everyone has been so helpful, so we’re excited to get the project started,” he said. “We appreciate the vision created here at this airport and making us a part of it.
Shaun Germolus, Kissimmee’s Director of Aviation, called this construction “a significant event,” in that it marks the first commercial hangar to be constructed at Gateway Airport since SunState Aviation developed its facility a decade ago, and it’s the first footprint of a Kissimmee Airport Airpark on that site.
“We are going to continue adding more hangars here,” he said. “We’re in discussions with three more (companies), with two adjacent here. One of the primary purposes of an airport is to be the economic engine of a community’s economy, and you can see that in this area,” he said, noting the presence of Cirrus and an adjacent air ambulance operation that flies daily, and other maintenance, flight instruction and dispatch services.
Kissimmee Mayor Olga Gonzalez said development at Kissimmee Gateway Airport like this is, “Crucial to the region.”
“It is the closest general aviation airport to Orlando’s convention area and the theme parks,” she said. “Its mission to bring competitive companies with unique skill sets has been imperative to its growth. Kissimmee continues to help grow the aviation industry.”
There is additional space for airport and aerospace expansion along Martin Luther King Boulevard, and on the site of the former Kissimmee Golf Club that is adjacent to both airport runways. Germolus said he hopes to attract aviation manufacturing entities that would attract several hundred more jobs.
“We’re here to take this airport to the next level, and the community with it,” he said.
