US Air Force photo Eight C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, such as the one shown above, will be stationed at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station. The adjacent airport has received grant funding to repave a taxiway they will use.

VIENNA — The Western Reserve Port Authority received an $8 million federal grant to resurface the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport’s 9,000-foot taxiway that leads to the facility’s main runway and connects to the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.

The WRPA is one of only 17 agencies to be awarded money Friday from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation program. The $8,028,000 award to the WRPA was the fifth-highest amount of the 17 projects. Overall, nearly $100 million in grants was announced Friday by the DOD.

“This is huge,” said Anthony Trevena, WRPA’s executive director. “It’s a really, really big deal. It is the driveway to the air base. Without it, the new C-130Js will have a hard time getting to the runway.”

Trevena is referring to eight new C-130J Super Hercules aircrafts coming to YARS. The planes cost about $1 billion.

The base will get two planes next year. Then there will be a 14-month gap before the next plane arrives. After that, a new plane will be delivered every other month until all eight are at the base.

It will take about three years for all eight planes to be stationed at YARS.

The taxiway at the airport, located in Vienna, is in poor condition, Trevena said.

“That’s been an issue for seven or eight years,” he said. “We need to do it now while it’s a resurfacing project. In the next three to five years, it’s a full-depth replacement and costs about four times the amount of resurfacing it. It would be crippling to wait that long. There’s no way we could do that.”

Resurfacing the taxiways will improve military training exercises, make deployments safer and make emergency response more rapid, according to the DOD statement.

Helping WRPA in this competitive federal grant was $3 million included in the state budget, approved June 30, for the airport to use to get greater federal funds for improvements, Trevena said. The state Senate had removed that money, but restored it at the request of state Sen. Sandra O’Brien, R-Lenox, who represents Trumbull County.

“We need that 10 percent match to leverage federal dollars,” Trevena said. “The Valley delegation took $800,000 and turned it into an almost $9 million project. It’s great teamwork here.”

The project will start next summer and take a couple of months to complete, he said.

ONLY OHIO AWARD

Josh Prest, executive director of the Eastern Ohio Military Affairs Commission, said the taxiway improvements “are very necessary for the air base operations. It’s huge to get ready for the new planes and for the longevity and viability of the air base and airport.”

He added: “This is a great announcement for the area. It’s the only project awarded in Ohio.”

U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, said the port authority and Valley officials “have been working as hard as ever to maintain the airport, attract commercial airlines and support the mission of the 910th Airlift Wing” at YARS.

This grant, he said, “will go a long way toward achieving these goals. Our region will greatly benefit from this grant as it will fulfill critical infrastructure needs at one of the largest economic drivers in the Mahoning Valley.”

Johnson’s district includes Mahoning and Columbiana counties.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, said the WRPA and YARS “are critical to our state and our national defense. This crucial investment will upgrade infrastructure at the base, allowing YARS to improve training and support Ohio service members.”

MAIN RUNWAY

The airport received a $5 million federal earmark last year from then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and is seeking an $8 million earmark through Brown. The $13 million combined amount would resurface the airport’s main runway, Trevena said.

Trevena said other efforts should bringd more money to the airport and air base, but declined Friday to provide specifics.

Still pending is U.S. Senate approval on a bill to classify the airport as a “primary airport,” which would make it eligible for $850,000 in annual Federal Aviation Administration funds for maintenance, planning and development.

The U.S. House approved the designation in July.

When the airport lost its last commercial air service, Allegiant Air, in January 2018, the FAA removed the primary airport designation.

When that happened, the FAA reduced the annual maintenance funding at the airport from $1 million annually to $150,000, Trevena said.

Youngstown-Warren is the only commercial airport in the country with an air reserve station that doesn’t have commercial air service.