The Rifle Garfield County Airport is hosting an open house Dec. 4 with the aim of allowing the community to view the facility’s developing Airport Layout Plan.

The plan will guide the airport for the next 20 years to “maximize airport use for the community and pilots who fly here, work here, and rely on the facility for firefighting, medical flights, or recreation,” according to a press release. The event will take place from 4:30 to 6 p.m. and bring together planning consultants from Lochner and the public.

The airport’s plan is to “maximize what the airport currently has for future needs,” the release states, focusing on a new inventory of what is at the airport, what pilots use every day, technical use of the airport, and parking. The plan also includes a demand forecast evaluation and looks for deficiencies in immediate needs, while defining what should be protected for long-term future development.

“The airport provides $80 million in annual economic impact to the community,” Rifle Garfield County Airport Director Sam Carver said in the release. “We are one of the busiest general aviation airports in Colorado. We sell 2.5 million gallons of aviation gas and jet fuel a year and have nearly 19,000 landings.”

Multiple client companies are currently building hangars, according to the release, and the airport’s infrastructure includes the established buildings of long-time fixed base operator Atlantic Aviation. Vantage Aviation is also starting new development. A focus for the airport is strategically specifying where hangars can be built and using existing county land for more parking space on the south side of the airport.

Priorities outlined in the press release also include expanding helicopter landing areas — with the intent of moving helicopter flights away from the airplane aviation areas in an effort to reduce congestion during peak times.

“This will facilitate faster deployment of helicopters for critical services,” the release states.

Peak times also need aircrafts on runways in a “timely manner” to avoid affecting takeoffs, which proposals aim to address with additional, newly engineered crossovers between the taxiway and runway so small aircraft is able to take off while larger aircraft wait for clearance from Denver.

“The plan projects that nearby private landowners may choose to expand development with land leases for businesses in future years,” the press release states.

Judd Hill, lead for Lochner Aviation — a planning, environmental consulting, design, construction engineering, and inspection company based in Chicago, Illinois — confirmed in the release that there are no new runways in the 20-year projection and there is not enough land for another runway.

“Also, the amount of traffic the current runway could provide would be as high as 230,000 takeoffs and landings a year to fully utilize it,” Hill said. “That would be as much traffic as Rifle, Grand Junction, and Montrose all do now, and projections do not show increases to occur to that level.”

Following the open house, the plan will be finalized and provided to the Federal Aviation Administration for review and any future grant funding.

For more information on the airport, visit the Rifle Garfield County Airport website.