PENDLETON — For the first time in decades, Pendleton’s Eastern Oregon Regional Airport is slated to operate debt-free.

In a Tuesday meeting with the city council and in a follow-up interview, Airport Manager Steve Chrisman explained how a “fortuitous twist of fate” allowed the city to garner $16.9 million in COVID-19 federal stimulus money, allowing the city to wipe away its debt and begin planning several renovation and improvement projects.

The city has made various efforts in recent years to pay off more than $2 million in debt at the airport, but it never planned to pay it all in one fell swoop, much less anticipate a worldwide pandemic that resulted in a multitrillion-dollar stimulus package from the federal government.

Air travel has fallen precipitously during the spread of COVID-19 and the Pendleton airport isn’t immune. Boutique Air, the airport’s federally subsidized passenger air service, reported 343 boardings in March, down by more than a third compared with February and 42% compared with March 2019.

When it came time for the federal government to distribute stimulus grants for airports, Chrisman said the Pendleton airport scored well, according to the federal formula, not only securing $7.5 million based on the airport’s previous four years of operational expenses, but also getting an additional $9.4 million.

“The extra $9-plus (million) is really just pennies from heaven,” he said.

When the airport struggled to support its own operations back in the 1990s, the city began loaning the airport money from other funds in the budget. In recent years, the city made efforts to write off some of the interest on the loans and make payments, but the persistence of the debt would occasionally draw scrutiny from the city’s financial auditors.

The stimulus grants allow the city to pay off the remaining $2 million it owed in interfund loans and another $500,000 in debt incurred to build hangars at the airport.

While the city could use the rest of the grant money to fund basic operations over the next few years, airport staff is instead planning on funneling the money toward deferred maintenance, new equipment and capital improvement projects.

The long list of projects includes items like new snow removal equipment, restriping the taxiways and runways, and new unmanned aerial system pads.

But the wish list also includes more ambitious expenditures, like an $800,000 renovation of the terminal and air traffic control tower and a $1.5 million maintenance facility for Boutique. Chrisman said the latter addition would result in more consistent flight service and opens up the possibility of creating more routes outside the standard Pendleton-Portland flight.

But airport staff cautioned that the list will need refinement before the money starts to flow in.

After calculating the cost of their priority projects, airport staff estimate they will have $3.3 million left to spend but more than $13.7 million worth of additional ideas to improve the airport, including a Boutique flight simulator building and a virtual tower for air traffic control.

Chrisman said more work will need to be done with Boutique to convince the San Francisco-based company to locate a maintenance facility in Pendleton, noting that previous rural facilities haven’t worked out for Boutique.

With the grant money provided on a reimbursement basis, City Manager Robb Corbett said the city will also have to figure out how to pay for all of these projects up front before the federal government covers the cost.

Chrisman said he will work with Associate Engineer Wayne Green to firm up the airport’s proposals before presenting a more concrete plan to the Pendleton City Council and Federal Aviation Administration for approval.