Building a hangar

Richard O

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Marietta, GA
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Richard O.
What better place to post this but in the "Hangar Talk" section of POA.:)

My EAA chapter is looking into building a chapter hangar. Has anyone recently built a hangar that wouldn't mind sharing what they paid. We're thinking about something in the neighborhood of 50' X 60', all metal.

Thanks.
 
I built a condo hangar about 7 - 8 years ago - 10,000 sq ft, cost almost $25 / foot. Steel has gone up four fold since then.

The last hangar built on the airport here is a 60 x 60 built a year or so ago. He paid over $50 / foot.

We're in a high growth area where labor and materials are expensive. But I'd be surprised if you can build an all steel & metal hangar with insulation and a good door for less than $30 / foot.

When you do your budget for the EAA chapter don't forget to include ongoing utilities, property tax, and insurance. That runs me about $1.50 per foot per year.

YMMV.
 
Thanks for the info guys. We're in a borrowed building now. They are very generous to us but it's hard to do workshops and things of that sort without a permanent place to store tools and equipment. We've been talking about a hangar for a long time but we've just formed a hangar committee to really look into our options. I know we have people with the skills to build a hangar (hey, we build airplanes, how much harder can a hangar be?) but getting people to commit that much time may be tough. Still the option of building it ourselves looks like a good way to save a substantial amount of money. Especially if we had an experienced person supervising.
 
If you go metal find someplace close by because the shipping is what really gets you.
 
Richard,

This might help in your budgeting process. The expense breakdown on my hangar was:

27.7% - Steel
15.6% - Slab / Dirt Work
11.6% - Hangar Doors
10.7% - Steel Erection
10.4% - Finish Carpentry
4.8% - Radient Heat
3.9% - Plumb Gas
3.8% - Plumb Water/Sewer
3.1% - Electric
2.1% - Consulting (contractor)
1.9% - Engineering (City Required)
1.4% - Hang Doors
1.3% - Paint Steel White
1.7% - Misc
0.6% - Sanitation (Roll-Offs / Porta Johns)
0.4% - Insurance (Workers Comp)

If I were building a hangar today, I'd do a rough estimate by figuring a $45 / foot cost, allocating that cost across these categories, then removing the categories I wasn't planning on doing (water/sewer/natural gas/finish carpentry, etc). Then double the steel cost and add up the remaining items. Multiply that by the square footage and I'd be in the ballpark.

Best of luck to your chapter.
 
I was searching around but couldn’t find any good answers. I am thinking about building a hangar. A big hangar-around 12,000 sq ft’. I have talked to a consultant that does this sort of thing but they also are in the business of selling this stuff so I was hoping someone could help identify some of the pros and cons
For starters it would be privately funded as opposed to public/private route.
have potential tenants (jets that are unhappy where they are) already which makes it seem like a good long term investment. Local field has relatively cheap jetA so people come here anyway just for that.
What kind of questions should I be asking or thinking about?
 
I've never built a hangar, but I've been thinking about it recently. So far, it looks like the quonset style buildings seem to be the best bang for the buck. Easy to erect, pretty cheap, easily customizable to fit your needs, sturdy. I like the ones with vertical sides best. There are many companies that sell them. Just do a search. I got a quote on a 42x70 with a dividing wall in the center, and doors at both ends and it came out to $22,000 for the kit. I helped my father-in-law construct a smaller garage sized one of this type in a day with 3 guys and basic hand tools. A hangar sized one would be more difficult, but I reckon a few chapter guys and a rented sky-trac or tractor with a front end loader could knock one out relatively quickly and cheaply. That's about all the insight I can offer at this point.
 
I would suggest that you plan to have a low ceiling building attached to the hangar for office, restroom, tool room, storage. That leaves the high bay area fro planes. The low area can share a wall and would cost less per sq ft.
 
I've never built a hangar, but I've been thinking about it recently. So far, it looks like the quonset style buildings seem to be the best bang for the buck. Easy to erect, pretty cheap, easily customizable to fit your needs, sturdy. I like the ones with vertical sides best. There are many companies that sell them. Just do a search. I got a quote on a 42x70 with a dividing wall in the center, and doors at both ends and it came out to $22,000 for the kit. I helped my father-in-law construct a smaller garage sized one of this type in a day with 3 guys and basic hand tools. A hangar sized one would be more difficult, but I reckon a few chapter guys and a rented sky-trac or tractor with a front end loader could knock one out relatively quickly and cheaply. That's about all the insight I can offer at this point.
The consultant firm we’ve talked to has about 15 projects going on like this. Going to try to reach out to one of these and visit and talk to them. Consultants make it sound easy. but there seem to be a lot of moving parts and when you are looking to invest over 1.5 mil you want to know the pitfalls. If it was easy everybody would be doing it right?? One of my concerns are about the land lease from the city as well. Some say the FAA dictates the rate has to be same for every hangar-some say it is negotiable with the city??
 
Very similar to what @gibbons posted, I have seen a few hangars go for sale that were roughly the OP's suggested size. I know one went for $44/sqft and I think the other went for $42/sqft. Both were fairly modern, large bi-fold doors (but not hydraulic) and heated. Being on a nice long city lease helped.
 
The consultant firm we’ve talked to has about 15 projects going on like this. Going to try to reach out to one of these and visit and talk to them. Consultants make it sound easy. but there seem to be a lot of moving parts and when you are looking to invest over 1.5 mil you want to know the pitfalls. If it was easy everybody would be doing it right?? One of my concerns are about the land lease from the city as well. Some say the FAA dictates the rate has to be same for every hangar-some say it is negotiable with the city??

Our City Manager has offered leases for $1 for anyone willing to build a hangar, lol.

In our case, however, the goal is to get more people based on the field to make us eligible for more federal fundage. Tiny airport in a tiny town. I would imagine this type of lease is not the norm. ;)
 
Just throwing this out there... They have insulated buildings before (like out on Arizona). There might be many "creative" options that could be extremely do-able (like using shipping containers for office/multi use space).

And, what piqued my interest to begin with... 60X60 for about $7.00 per sq. foot. For the building exterior only...

Add for concrete floor, etc. AND, it's a portable building (No property taxes in many instances).

Now, they may not be allowed in some municipal settings, but most airports are outside of city limits....

They have engineers, and will help with the design concept etc.. you can have solid ends with hangar doors...

It doesn't hurt to query them...

https://www.clearspan.com
 
Our City Manager has offered leases for $1 for anyone willing to build a hangar, lol.

In our case, however, the goal is to get more people based on the field to make us eligible for more federal fundage. Tiny airport in a tiny town. I would imagine this type of lease is not the norm. ;)

I have heard of similar situations - $1/year to lease the land for 30 years then the land rolls back to city/county property. Nothing like that around here, though. Waiting lists for hangars at every airport in the area, yet county/airport mgmt does their best to prevent people from building hangars. Gee.. Can't imagine why GA struggles to get new people into the industry...
 
I have heard of similar situations - $1/year to lease the land for 30 years then the land rolls back to city/county property. Nothing like that around here, though. Waiting lists for hangars at every airport in the area, yet county/airport mgmt does their best to prevent people from building hangars. Gee.. Can't imagine why GA struggles to get new people into the industry...

Yeah, I can't imagine either. In our case, the city wants access to the grant money available if we get more tenants, but won't put up the money for the 5 additional hangars necessary to get the tenants, despite having a waiting list for as long as I can remember.
 
Hello Andrew I am at KGMJ and followed a past post you were on in getting T hangars built. if you have a chance could you call or text me at 918 740 0972 I had a couple questions over the things you probably ran in to or that I may have infant of me.
 
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