Wilmington’s general aviation community will soon see a new hangar rising on the Air Wilmington site at Wilmington International Airport.

At the company’s ground breaking ceremony Tuesday morning, officials said that the new structure will contain 21,000 square feet of space and measure 28 feet high, 140 feet deep and 150 feet wide. It will be enclosed, and its floor will support a load of 100,000 pounds per tire, officials said.

“It will handle most all of our corporate aircraft up to and including mega jets,” said company president Bill Cherry. “It can hold multiple airplanes and at least two Gulfstream-style airplanes.”

The new hangar will replace a slightly larger one that was built in 1939 and will be razed.

The hangar, a $3 million project, is the airport’s largest private investment to date and will represent a significant upgrade to the airport, Cherry said.
 
“We are responsible for [upgrades] as part of our lease,” he said.

Cherry said that Air Wilmington has been restricted in constructing new space because it did not have adequate water for a hangar sprinkler system or foam fire suppression system. Now that the airport has new water lines, those systems are no longer out of reach.

The hangar project is expected to be complete in March, Cherry said. Plans call for an additional hangar to be built next to it as local corporate needs dictate.

Air Wilmington, which is now the Wilmington International Airport’s only general aviation fixed base operator, offers 15 hangars – both small individual and larger multi-aircraft structures.