Project Runway

A new, privately owned airport in Branson means big changes for you and for 417-land. Find out what's in store once this unprecedented project is complete.

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The panel on the side of our 2002 Chevy Tahoe reads “Branson Airport,” as we plummet down a slope of mud and rock toward half a dozen monstrous dump trucks whose individual wheels are each the size of our vehicle. We’ve been traveling a vague notional road that is rapidly becoming a reality. The approach to the Branson Airport is being hacked out of the 417-land wilderness one hillside and one 20-foot rock wall at a time. We are careening toward just such a cut through bare stone now.

Branson Airport’s executive director, Jeff Bourk, is at the wheel, as I cling to my seat and comment that going down is much worse than up.

“This is the good road,” Bourk says. “When I first came out here, we had to hike in two hours.”

Bourk is a man momentarily at the center of a titanic act of creation. To hear the developers tell the tale, this new airport promises to change everything about not just Branson, but the entire region. Bourk isn’t just one of many who have bought into the dream of an airport in Branson, he is the one with the challenge of making it a reality by May of 2009. He is also enjoying every minute of it.

 

Click here to view a wide-angle, interactive photograph of the Branson Airport's 7,000-plus foot, under-construction runway. Click here to view a slideshow of even more aerial shots of the Branson Airport.

We pause at the edge of a ravine. Concrete supports mark the future path of a bridge. Below us, a meandering country creek winds across the way. Amazingly clear Ozarks water cascades over rocks. Despite the construction all around, it isn’t cloudy. That’s an impressive feather in the cap of McAninch Construction.

Across the creek, the road continues through a cut sided by 30 feet of solid rock. Bourk tells me about coming down here a few days earlier to watch them blast their way through. I comment that it sounds like fun.

“Remember playing with Tonka trucks when you were a kid?” Bourk asks. “It’s a lot like that.”

In just a few weeks, McAninch Construction has moved 11 million cubic yards of earth. Imagine a 660-story building with the footprint of an NFL football field, and you will have some idea of the volume.

McAninch has moved a lot of Missouri dirt already. It expanded Highway 65 south into Arkansas, expanded Highway 13 and worked on the Springfield-Branson National Airport expansion before taking on the Branson Airport project. Bourk says McAninch is a large part of why the airport is on-budget and ahead of schedule.

The access road alone cost $10 million to hack out of the Missouri wilderness, including construction of two 400-foot-long, 80-foot-high bridges.

The powers that be with the Branson Airport called Bourk, based on Bourk’s background in bringing low-cost airlines to Portland, Maine, and his previous work in airport upgrades and construction with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

“They sat with me right here in the woods and said, ‘There will be a road going through here,’“ Bourk says. “I looked at that and told them they were going to have to pay me more money.”

That project pales in comparison to leveling enough 417-land hills to land FAA Class IV jet aircraft. When it is complete, Bourk expects the airport to see 275,000 enplanements in its first year, landing aircraft potentially the size of 767s.

At the actual airport site itself, it is hard to grasp the reality of what you are seeing. Where there were hills, there is now a plateau, and even at the unpaved stage, a very visible runway. At one end, a disassembled concrete plant waits like Legos for assembly. Things are moving very fast here. By the time I write this in late April, the Legos are assembled and paving has begun.

“We won’t actually finish the entire project any earlier,” Bourk says. “There are other things that will take a set amount of time, but we won’t be worrying about paving or earth moving.”

Earth moving is going on elsewhere around Branson, and at least some of it is because of the airport. There has been a flurry of commercial real estate development since the airport was announced.