The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Indiana State Board of Accounts reports for the St. Joseph County Airport Authority (2005 CAFR; 2007 CAFR; county annual financial reports 2019 and 2023); Authority press release, March 2008; Aviation Pros, 22 August 2011; Airport Improvement magazine; South Bend Tribune, 9 March 2012
The banked article names the Airport Authority as current owner and stops; the checklist asks for the founding and the capital record, and both are dug here — with the carriers in conflict, printed whole and never merged. The founding first. The Authority's own audited reports do not agree with each other. The 2007 comprehensive annual financial report, and the county reports of 2019 and 2023 behind it, state that the St. Joseph County Airport Authority is a municipal corporation established August 1, 1973 under Indiana Code 19-6-3.5 (recodified as IC 8-22-3), governed by a four-member board appointed by the County Commissioners. The Authority's 2005 CAFR states instead that it was established January 1, 1974 by the County Council under IC 1971 19-6-2 (PL 304, superseded by IC 8-22-3), that the airport was county-owned from 1938 to January 1, 1974, and that the field was renamed Michiana Regional Airport on that date. Both establishment dates stand in the Authority's own paper; this article prints both and adopts neither. A lesser variance rides with them: an Indiana transportation-history carrier dates the county's purchase of the field from Bendix to 1937, against the 2005 CAFR's county ownership from 1938. The capital record: the present terminal was built in 1981. Its concourse expansion was announced in March 2008 as an $11.8 million project — 45,000 square feet, five new jet bridges, nine gates in total. The completed cost is carried three ways and all three print: $15.5 million (Aviation Pros, August 2011); $15.8 million (Airport Improvement magazine, which dates the phases November 2010, August 2011 and February 2012 and gives the enlarged terminal at about 200,000 square feet); and $14 million (the South Bend Tribune's final report of 9 March 2012, on a 27-month project). The runways as the FAA record carries them: 9L/27R, 4,300 by 75 feet; 9R/27L, 8,414 by 150; 18/36, 7,100 by 150; the field at 2,200 acres, elevation 799 feet. The most recent capital line reached: a $105 million, seven-year taxiway and ramp rehabilitation completed in September 2025. The residue is named expressly: runway construction costs at each lengthening were not reached in any carrier, and they stand open behind the figures above.