The family of Doc Wething cuts the ribbon to officially open the new runway at the Wething Field at the Detroit Lakes Airport on August 14, 2021.
Detroit Lakes, MN (KDLM) – A project that has long been a dream at the Detroit Lakes-Becker County Airport officially opened on Friday morning, with the ribbon cutting of the new 5,200-foot runway.
“It was the plan back in the late ’70s and early ’80s to extend the runway,” says Mark Hagen, who is a member of the Detroit Lakes Airport commission. “But that got held up by a number of things: financing, zoning, etc. In 2000, we really started seriously looking at expanding this project.”
The family of Doc Wething, a long-time aviation pioneer and advocate in Detroit Lakes, was on hand to cut the ribbon and officially open the runway.
The runway has gotten a major makeover: the old 4,500-foot long, 75-foot wide runway has been reworked into a 5,200-foot long, 100-foot wide runway. The old half-taxiway has become a full parallel taxiway, and the new runway has been moved about 1,000 feet away further from Highway 10 for safety reasons.
“One of the problems we had was that the runway was too close to the highway on the north end. It was under a waiver, and they wanted that waiver to go away,” Hagen said. “Then you had airport road on the south end that people didn’t want to be closed. Those are issues that could have caused us to have a 3,500-foot runway.”
“We spent years looking around the county for another place to move this project. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard, but you need two miles of area. You can’t be within two miles of wetland protection area, you can’t be within two miles of a landfill. There were a number of things that had to be considered.”
The budget for the project sits near $25 million, which includes everything from the original environmental study to the perimeter fencing project. A lot of that has been covered by federal funding.
“We’ve still got some things to take care of. Runway lights need to be installed,” says Hagen. “We also have plans to install a new fuel system in the hanger, and we need to add some new airplane hangers and some additional parking spaces…everything is pretty full. We also need new doors on some of the existing hangers. They’re becoming a bit of a danger. There are no brakes on them, and some of the cables are getting old. Other than that, we’re in pretty good shape.”
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