Moore County Airport Receives $2.5M State Grant for Infrastructure Upgrades and Job Creation
Why It MattersState economic-development funding can compress construction timelines for smaller airports, letting hangar and terminal projects proceed years earlier than local budgets alone would allow.
What happened
Moore County Airport has secured a $2.5 million grant from the North Carolina Department of Transportation, funded through the state's Airport Economic Development Fund, which supports construction projects at smaller aviation facilities across North Carolina.
The money will finance upgrades to the airport's buildings and runways, including new taxi lanes connecting to corporate hangars currently under construction and a new Fixed Base Operator terminal. Work is also planned to attract commercial airline service back to Moore County. Officials say the investment is expected to generate more than 75 aviation jobs through new hangar construction.
Pat Molamphy, an at-large member of the North Carolina Board of Transportation, called airports like Moore County "critical drivers of economic development across North Carolina," adding that "these investments strengthen local communities by supporting business growth, attracting private investment, and creating high-quality jobs." An airport official identified as Kiker said the funding "allows us to support businesses that want to invest in our community and positions us to serve future economic development activity in Moore County," and noted it significantly shortens the timeline for improvements that would have taken much longer using only local funds.
Moore County Airport traces its history to 1929, when the Tufts family established the site as Knollwood Airport with a single dirt runway. Moore County purchased the land in 1935. During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Corps used the facility to train pilots, and civilian operations resumed in 1945. Piedmont Airlines once served passengers at the airport before the carrier became USAir.
Industry impact & what to watch
State-backed grants like this one follow a familiar pattern for regional aviation infrastructure: public funds targeting smaller airports to accelerate projects that would otherwise depend on limited local tax bases or slow-building private capital.
For general aviation and corporate-hangar development, this kind of funding matters because runway, taxiway and FBO work often determines whether an airport can attract business aircraft owners and eventually court scheduled airline service again. The jobs tied to hangar construction and the stated goal of restoring commercial service both depend on the physical upgrades happening first.
What comes into focus now is execution: whether the taxi lanes, hangars and new FBO terminal are completed on the accelerated schedule the grant is meant to enable, and whether any airline commits to serving Moore County once the infrastructure is in place.
