WINCHESTER — A grand opening celebration for Winchester Regional Airport’s new terminal was held Thursday evening.

The 16,300-square-foot building — dubbed the “airport terminal of the future” — “is a building that improves our capability to communicate with the community what we do,” Winchester Regional Airport Authority Chairman Bill Pifer told attendees.

That includes everything from aiding emergency medical services, to promoting economic growth to educating the next generation of aviation professionals.

The new airport terminal replaces a 9,245-square-foot terminal built in 1989 that, according to Winchester Regional Airport Executive Director Nick Sabo, was “in need of a significant overhaul” and whose location “was in conflict with some FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) design criteria on the air side, as we call it.”

Winchester Regional Airport is a general aviation facility located at 491 Airport Road in Frederick County, just southeast of Winchester. It was established in 1937. The Winchester Regional Airport Authority, created by state legislation in 1987, is responsible for the airport’s management and ownership. It has board representation from Winchester and Frederick, Clarke, Shenandoah and Warren counties.

In 2016, a preliminary design study about what a replacement terminal would require was conducted, as well as some pre-engineering work. After a few years of competing for state grants for the project, planning for the project began in earnest in 2019 and a groundbreaking ceremony was held in March 2023.

Now, the project is complete.

Included in the new terminal are three rentable spaces, one of which is being occupied by the Top of Virginia Regional Chamber, which Pifer said is “a close partner and a wonderful partner.”

There also are two dedicated flight school spaces and a conference room where, according to Pifer, “you look out on the runway and see incredible things happening.”

“So we think that that space is going to be in high demand,” Pifer said of the latter, “and that helps us as an airport, because we charge some rent for that.”

Other features include around-the-clock access for pilots, who may be flying in and out at odd hours, and the potential to help Winchester Aviation — which sells fuel and services planes at the airport — to conduct business “at a very high level,” he noted.

Between state-issued grant funding and $5 million granted by the General Assembly in 2022, Virginia invested almost $12 million in the new terminal — about 82% of the facility’s total cost. The rest of the funding came through a loan from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Former state Sen. Jill Vogel, who represented the 27th District from 2008 to 2024, led the charge to get her then-colleagues in Richmond to back funding for the airport project.

Officials thanked Vogel for her contributions to the project on Thursday, though the way she tells it, she was just doing her job.

“I shouldn’t take credit for the one thing I’m supposed to do, which is to do my job,” Vogel said during her remarks. “And that’s really what that was, was to do my job, to show up and stand up for my district and for my community. And I cannot think of a more worthy thing to support, or to work hard for, or to beg my colleagues to support, or to nag, or to, you know, humiliate myself and trade my life for, and that was for this project. And I’m really, really proud of it. I was proud to be a part of it.”

Vogel later told The Winchester Star that she believes the airport is an important resource for the Northern Shenandoah Valley, particularly in terms of economic development and transportation infrastructure. With the area’s proximity to the Virginia Inland Port in Warren County, as well as its location along the Interstate 81 corridor, Vogel said that having a place where people can fly in and out and host meetings is crucial to continued economic success.

“I think it’s actually quite important,” she said. “And when you look at what an important intersection this part of the valley is, Winchester and Winchester Regional Airport, specifically, is for people who are coming and going. And having a facility like this where people can come and meet and then leave, it’s actually way more important than people realize. ... And so I’m really thrilled for what it will mean for the region.”

Investing in the airport will also allow the Winchester area to keep up with up-and-coming aviation technology, according to officials. Virginia Secretary of Transportation Sheppard Miller joked during his remarks on Thursday that, when he first stepped into his role, he received some sideways glances for mentioning flying cars in his speech.

“People thought I was a little bit out there,” he said. “The policy people said, ‘You need to stop talking about that.’ I said, ‘It’s coming.’ And it is. Folks, this terminal is proof that we are, in fact, moving towards flying cars, perhaps by different names, such as UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System). But in essence, that’s what the future of aviation holds. It will be so much different 50 years from now than it is today. We all know that, and it’s so exciting.”

Pifer said in an interview that he anticipates a “new world of aviation” within the next decade where people will come to places like Winchester Regional Airport to hop on a plane and commute to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.

“Some people will do it now, but it’s fairly expensive because it’s a ... conventional plane, and they have to have a pilot and so forth,” he said. “But in the future, they will be hybrid. They may even be unmanned, which makes people nervous, but they’ll be able to do short hops. There’s even talk of a $50 plane ride to Dulles from here, and you don’t have to fight the traffic and park your car and so forth. So it’ll be such a totally different world.”

Stakeholders are thrilled with the project’s possibilities. Now, Sabo said he feels a responsibility to make “the vision and the rhetoric” around the new terminal a reality.

There’s potential to support local law enforcement and fire and rescue, he said. He can even see a future where an emergency operations center becomes part of the airport’s service model.

“So I’m excited to see the creative uses and applications that come from the community that we can be a good partner on,” he said.

Miller believes that such possibilities place Winchester, and Virginia as a whole, at the forefront of the aviation industry, opening a door between the Northern Shenandoah Valley and the rest of the world.

“What we have here is an airport that meets the needs of aviation today,” he said, “but also stands ready to embrace and support the aviation of tomorrow.”

Beyond new technologies, commerce and economic development, Pifer said Winchester Regional Airport celebrates what he calls “the romance of aviation” — the wonder that people, young and old, experience when watching aircrafts take flight. He believes the new airport terminal will allow that wonder to continue.

“We see it in the eyes of the children that come out here for story time,” he said, referring to a popular Handley Regional Library program held at the airport.

Winchester Regional Airport’s terminal is open from 7 a.m.-6 p.m. daily. For more about the airport, visit https://www.flyokv.com/pilot-resources/main-terminal.

— Contact Molly Williams at mwilliams@winchesterstar.com

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