The Clark County Department of Aviation will reopen one of McCarran International Airport‘s four runways next week, several days before its previously announced May 1 return to service. Runway 25L/7R and the adjacent taxiway Alpha have been closed to aircraft since Nov. 1 so contractors could replace their former asphalt surfaces with more-durable concrete and asphalt surfacing. The runway’s actual reopening date will be decided early next week based on the progress of some final preparations by McCarran’s Airside
Operations division.
“We’ve said all along this work would be finished well before the start of the summer travel season,” said Randall H. Walker, director of the Clark County Department of Aviation. “Despite some wet and windy weather, and even a significant December snowstorm, the team worked night and day to get this job done on time.”
Las Vegas Paving served as the project’s primary contractor. Workers began preparing the site in August, three months before the runway was closed to air traffic. This advance work included building a temporary concrete plant; planning for job site egress and ingress; and erecting enough temporary fencing to separate the nearly 10,500–foot-long runway from other active runways and taxiways close to the work site. Since November, approximately 144,000 cubic yards of asphalt were demolished and replaced with 200,000
cubic yards of concrete and another 57,500 cubic yards of new asphalt. This was equivalent to the amount of material needed to construct a 5-foot-wide sidewalk spanning nearly 790 miles, greater than the distance between Las Vegas and Portland, Ore. Workers also replaced nearly 350,000 linear feet of conduit used to power and control portions of McCarran’s airfield lighting system.
The runway project also featured a notable effort to recycle all of the asphalt, non-reinforced concrete, electrical cable and scrap metal removed from the work site. The asphalt was re-used at other construction sites at McCarran and elsewhere in the valley, while the demolished concrete was crushed and processed offsite for use as sub-base material in other construction projects. The Federal Aviation Administration and McCarran met regularly while the runway was closed to discuss how to maximize the use of McCarran’s three other runways and maintain a steady flow of flights both in and out of Las Vegas. The FAA also contributed $30.9 million toward the project’s costs; the remainder was financed through airport business operations, not local tax dollars.
CONTACT: Chris Jones Public Information Administrator
(702) 261-5290
