Columbus Municipal Airport director Brian Payne visits with John Baer, Woolpert aviation design and consultant, during presentations by architecture firms vying to design Columbus Municipal Airport’s new air traffic control tower in October.
The Republic file photo
The Columbus Municipal Airport announced Monday that it selected a Fayetteville, Arkansas-based firm to design a new 100-foot-tall air traffic control tower.
The firm, Marlon Blackwell Architects, will collaboration on the project with the Federal Aviation Administration and Woolpert, an aviation-focused engineering firm. The tower project is expected to cost $11.5 million.
The new tower will replace the airport’s existing 80-year-old tower and will be upgraded to align with current FAA Air Traffic Control Tower standards, including sighting, backup cooling and power, security, fire and life safety and FAA equipment.
The project will be supported by a grant from the Cummins Foundation Architecture Program. Construction is expected to begin in April 2025 after a year-long design process.
“Over the past three months a guiding team of community members has been evaluating an outstanding group of architecture firms from across the country for this project,” Columbus Municipal Airport Director Brian Payne said in a statement. “We had an incredibly high caliber of architects competing for this project, but, in the end, the team selected Marlon Blackwell Architects for its vision, ingenuity and overall passion for the Columbus community.”
Other architectural firms that were being considered for the project included Minnesota-based Snow Kreilich, New York-based SO – IL Architects and Boston-based Howeler + Yoon.
Marlon Blackwell Architects will work with the multi-disciplinary Woolpert team. The firm’s longtime collaborators, Guy Nordenson and Associates, will support the structural design and contribute to the unique identity of the project. Additionally, Thornton Tomasetti and Threshold Acoustics also will work closely with the design team, the airport said.
“We are so honored to have been selected to contribute to the architectural legacy of Columbus,” Marlon Blackwell said in a statement. “More than a piece of infrastructure, our hope is that the new Columbus Municipal Airport Air Traffic Control Tower will become a beacon of Columbus’s architectural and design heritage, that will mark a key gateway into the city.”
