U.S. grant to support new Mexico airport

U.S. grant to support new Mexico airport The U.S. Trade and Development Agency awarded a $630,000 grant Friday to OIB Aeropuerto to promote the construction of a new airport in Northwest Mexico.
   The grant will be used to develop a “roadmap” for a greenfield international passenger and cargo airport in Ensenada, USTDA said.
   The Mexican government granted OIB Aeropuerto a 30-year concession in 2007 to construct, administer and operate the airport. The airport will replace Ensenada’s small general aviation airport (El Cipres), which is surrounded by the city and cannot be expanded further, and to serve as a secondary airport to Tijuana, located 80 kilometers to the north.
   OIB Aeropuerto, a private company, has selected San Francisco-based T.Y. Lin International as the U.S. firm that will perform the USTDA-sponsored study. In addition to the grant, T.Y. Lin will contribute additional resources toward the study’s completion.
   Last year, USTDA provided more than $2 million in support of priority infrastructure projects that further the objectives of Mexico’s 2007-2012 National Infrastructure Program (NIP), including three other airport development grants that were awarded in February 2008 at the USTDA-sponsored U.S. and Mexico Building Partnerships in Infrastructure conference in Mexico City.
   “Together these grants reflect USTDA’s strategy of focusing on development projects in Mexico that will create opportunities for the export of U.S. manufactured goods and services,” the agency said.
   The new Ensenada airport will eventually serve as a cargo and logistics hub for Northwest Mexico in support of the NIP objective to increase the country’s air cargo capacity by 50 percent. The airport will have access to intermodal links to seaports and surface transportation modes, including road and rail, USTDA said.