A Century of Pride and Progress

 

Gary/Chicago Airport - Maintenance Hangar

"Airport Construction Helps to Redevelop Gary, Indiana"

SITUATION

Airport congestion at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway Airports, the bane for many travelers, could turn out to be a boom for Gary, Indiana. Located 25 miles southeast of downtown Chicago, the Gary/Chicago Airport occupies 700 acres of land and stands poised to assume a position as the region's third major airport. With the lowest operating costs and landing fees in the region, and with no slots available at O'Hare and Midway, a number of carriers are looking at the Gary/Chicago Airport as a way to enter the lucrative Chicago market.

RESPONSE

As part of the Master Plan, the airport authority recently completed construction of a new aircraft maintenance facility to service passenger, cargo and corporate aircraft. Early in the project planning stage, Pangere called in Butler Heavy Structures to review the preliminary concepts. According to Bill Rathjen, Vice President and General Manager for Pangere, "The Butler Heavy Structures team assisted us with preliminary design ideas and budgets during the early planning stages of the project. We were working with the airport authority for close to two years before the project went public. We believe that this early involvement was instrumental in Pangere Corporation being awarded the project." The Pangere Corporation was contracted to design/build a 200' x 265' x 70' maintenance hangar capable of housing two 727 commercial jets.

RESULTS

The Pangere Corporation worked closely with the airport's team and provided a material-erected package for the hangar superstructure. The project consisted of a 150' wide hangar building, 61' at the eave, and adjacent 2-story office buildings running along one side and the back of the 31,000 sq. ft. hangar. While the building geometry was very straightforward, the structural design was complicated by a unique "canopy" hangar door. Weighing nearly 100,000 pounds, the door imparts tremendous loads to the building structure which must support its weight in the open position and during operation. To accommodate the unique loads, a hybrid structural system that combined rigid frame action with braced framing was used.

– adapted from an article in Heavy Metal, May 2001