Moore County Airport Receives $5 Million North Carolina Grant for Infrastructure Expansion

Moore County Airport has been awarded a $5 million Airport Economic Development Grant from the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to fund infrastructure improvements at the general aviation facility. The grant was issued through the North Carolina Airports Economic Development Fund, a performance-based program administered by the NCDOT Division of Aviation that funds time-sensitive capital improvement projects at the state's general aviation airports to stimulate private investment and create jobs.

The funding will expand taxi lanes to serve new corporate hangars currently under construction and develop additional hangar capacity to meet growing demand. It also supports construction of a new Fixed Base Operator terminal building and continued efforts to restore commercial air service to Moore County. Pat Molamphy, an at-large member of the North Carolina Board of Transportation, said the project is expected to facilitate hangar construction that will create more than 75 aviation jobs, adding that "these investments strengthen local communities by supporting business growth, attracting private investment, and creating high-quality jobs." Adam Kiker, chairman of the Moore County Airport Authority, said the funding accelerates improvements that would otherwise require years of local financing, stating it "allows us to support businesses that want to invest in our community and positions us to serve future economic development activity in Moore County."

Moore County Airport was established in 1929 by the Tufts family, founders of the Pinehurst Resort, originally as a single dirt runway called Knollwood Airport. Moore County acquired the airport in 1935, and it served as a U.S. Army Air Corps training facility during World War II before transitioning to civilian operations in 1945. The airport later supported commercial service through Piedmont Airlines until that service ended following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Moore County owns the airport, and the Moore County Airport Authority operates it.

This grant belongs to a broader category of state-level economic development funding aimed at general aviation airports, where public capital is used to unlock private hangar and corporate investment that local budgets alone could not finance quickly. Performance-based programs like the North Carolina Airports Economic Development Fund tie state dollars to measurable outcomes such as job creation and hangar construction, shifting the airport's role from a purely transportation asset to a driver of regional economic activity.

For Moore County, the taxiway expansion and new FBO terminal are direct inputs to hangar capacity, which in turn determines how much corporate and business aviation traffic the field can absorb going forward. Whether the parallel effort to restore commercial air service, absent since Piedmont Airlines ended flights after 2001, gains traction will depend on separate carrier and market decisions not addressed by this grant. The next marker to watch is the pace of hangar construction and whether the projected 75 jobs materialize as the corporate hangar projects are completed.