Agreements keep Lawton airport on track to receive a new control tower

Lawton-Fort Sill Regional Airport is on track to receive a new air traffic control tower.

Airport Director Barbara McNally said in Summer 2022 that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had approached Lawton about replacing the control tower that dates to the 1960s. Last week, members of the Lawton Metropolitan Area Airport Authority signed off on a Memorandum of Understanding and a revocable right of entry permit that will make the project a reality. Approval of the documentation comes after the FAA inspected the airport and analyzed five sites along the runway.

“They settled on one,” McNally said, of a site that is farther south than the existing traffic control tower (mid-field, rather than just south of Bishop School property on South Sheridan Road) and closer to the runway (the existing tower is closer to Sheridan Road).

The new tower also will be taller than the existing one, at an estimated 80 feet, and ADA-accessible (something the existing tower is not).

The factors combine to resolve multiple issues: modernizing the control facility that guides aircraft landing at the Lawton airport while also allowing controllers in the tower to see the far south end of the runway. Today, aircraft on that south end are not visible to the tower because of a slight slope in the field, controllers say.

Lawton’s airport will be one of 30 expected to receive new air control towers by 2030, under a bi-partisan infrastructure bill announced by the federal government last year. The goal is to modernize control towers across the nation. McNally said the FAA approached airports to offer the opportunity to build towers at the federal government’s cost. That means no local funding will be necessary, McNally said, adding the airport’s commitment is providing the land for the facility, as it does for the existing tower.

The memorandum of understanding (MOU) sets a 2-acre lease between the airport’s governing board and the FAA, with the airport granted a revocable permit for the tower. That tower and its equipment will be built, operated, maintained and owned by the FAA, just as today’s is. The MOU specifies the selected site provides “full view of the runway and airport” and that document reserves the site for FAA use for 24 months; after that time, the airport authority can use it for other things.

McNally said the airport has not yet been told when the new tower will be built.

McNally said the new towers are being designed under the same format used to build Lawton’s original control tower. Today’s project is creating a prototype that can be replicated all over the country, with adjustments made for each site.

“They can be tweaked to each location,” McNally said, explaining that means adjustments that will adapt to the tower to weather and environmental conditions unique to each site.

McNally said she isn’t certain what will happen to the existing tower, but believes that structure won’t be preserved.

That 60-year-old tower was one of 16 based on a prototype created by famed architect I.M. Pei. When it became known in July 2022 that the FAA was going to replace Lawton’s tower, some residents wanted to preserve the structure. Pei headed the firm that won a 1962 FAA competition to design a standard air traffic control tower, used to build towers in the 1960s and 1970s. That includes Lawton’s tower, as well as the one used at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

McNally said the ultimate decision doesn’t rest with locals.

“It’s an FAA tower. It’s always been their facility,” she said.

McNally’s guess: the tower probably will be torn down because there is no use for the building and it cannot be opened to the public because it is located on secured airport property.

“They (other airports) are not preserving the old towers they are replacing,” she said.