A project to build a bypass around the south side of the city will require $20 million in the coming years and the relocation of 1,000 feet of one of the two runways at Seymour’s airport.

Removing 1,000 feet from one end of Runway 5-23 at Freeman Field Municipal Airport and placing it at the other end of that same runway is a move that also is going to help address a couple of ongoing concerns the Federal Aviation Administration has with the airport, said Brian Thompson, who is president of the airport authority board.

Both of those concerns involve the configuration of the two runways at the airport, built as a training base for twin-engine bomber pilots in 1941 during World War II.

The first issue is the approach to Runway 05-23, which runs from northeast to southwest. That approach crosses over South Walnut Street (State Road 11). Moving 1,000 feet of it from the northeast end of the runway to the southwest end into what is now a field would move the approach away from Walnut Street and eliminate that issue.

The second involves the south ends of Runway 5-23 and Runway 14-32 which meet.

Thompson said two runways at an airport at Lexington, Kentucky, came together the same way. On Aug. 27, 2007, a pilot taking off turned on the wrong runway and ran out of room to get into the air, because it was shorter than the other runway. Forty-seven passengers and two of three crew members on Comair Flight 5191 died.

“They were potentially going to restrict us on any future projects if we didn’t correct that,” Thompson said of the issue even though Seymour’s runways are the same length.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires an updated Airport Layout Plan be in place before any major projects can be started.

“We’ve kind of just avoided big projects,” Thompson said.

Because of the need to move the runway for the bypass, the airport authority’s board recently began the process of updating the current plan, which was last done in 2005.

On Monday night, the board agreed to allow Cory Harper, an airport planner with Butler Fairman & Seufert of Indianapolis, to prepare the plan for submission to the FAA.

Approval of that plan, to be paid for by the city, could take up to 24 months, Harper told the board during a recent meeting. The city also will fund the runway project, if it is approved.

Harper told airport authority member Lloyd Hudson that filing the plan will allow the Burkart Boulevard project to move forward.

The proposed bypass, part of Phase II of the Burkart Boulevard extension project, will cut across the northeast corner of the airport, which the FAA won’t allow unless the runway is moved further to the southwest, Thompson said.

The present configuration was “grandfathered in” when the government gave the airport to the city after WWII, Thompson added.

Phase I of the project, which has a $13 million price tag, will take Burkart Boulevard from U.S. 50 on the east side of the city south through farm fields to South O’Brien Street near Silgan Plastics.

The project includes construction of a railroad overpass to give motorists a route for getting around trains traveling on the Louisville and Indiana Railroad line, which runs through the city bisecting it into east and west halves. The overpass will cross the rail line southeast of Silgan and just north of East County Road 340N.

The city already has the design work completed for the first phase of the Burkart South project. The next step is property acquisition, where the city will purchase the 22 acres of property needed to build the road.

Construction won’t begin for another two years until after the project goes out for bids in July 2020. It will take two years to build Phase I.

The second phase of the south extension project will connect Burkart to Freeman Field by taking the route to South Airport Road, which will then reconnect with U.S. 50 on the west side of the city.

Once all phases are completed, motorists, especially semitrailer traffic, will be able to bypass Seymour from the intersection of U.S. 50 and Airport Road all the way to the intersection of Burkart Boulevard and U.S. 50.