MARION —Vaiden Field Airport received another boost on June 6 when the ribbon was cut on the eight new T-Hangars that will house planes at the airfield.

The completion of the hangars is the second part of a revenue-generating project that has been ongoing at the airport since Sept. 2010 when two fuel tanks that sell gasoline and jet fuel were installed.

“This helps us complete phase two of what I feel like is a three-phase project,” said airport director Bill Hansen. “The first was the putting in the necessary infrastructure with the runway. Part two is putting in revenue generating outlets, like the fuel tanks and the T-Hangars. Hopefully the next phase is creating the infrastructure for other independent business to come and start providing jobs to the Perry County area.”

The eight units were funded with a loan of $300,000 form Marion Bank and Trust, Hansen said.

Hansen said the cost of the project was greatly reduced due to the horizontal pavement process being paid for by a federal grant that was obtained by the airport authority due to the hangars being within 250 feet of the parallel taxiway.

As of now, four of the eight hangars are being leased out, but Hansen expects all of the hangars to be full by the end of the year.

“That’s the expectation,” he said.

“We have had great traffic since the start up of the fuel tanks. We have already quadrupled the number of flight logs over the past year. Because federal grants are determined by the flight logs of an airport, we expect this to help a lot.”