Expanding Fabens Airport Expected to Expand Some More

Four years after completing its business development plan, officials with the growing County of El Paso Airport in the city of Fabens are hoping to see facility upgrades that could include the construction of a new runway.

The 400-acre airport, located roughly 32 miles to the southeast of downtown El Paso at 1611 North Fabens Road, was built in 1959 after the Texas State Legislature passed a bill allowing El Paso County to acquire the land needed for the facility.

The airport has long been utilized by U.S. Customs, Border Patrol, and Texas Transportation Department aircraft. In 2016, it was announced that El Paso County and the University of Texas at El Paso had entered into an agreement allowing for the building of the school's Aerospace Center test facilities at the airport.

That agreement, the El Paso Times has since noted, is transforming the Fabens airport into a "premiere aerospace research and testing facility."

Recent work has also seen an upgrade to the airport's main operations building, the repaving of an existing runway, and the ongoing UTEP construction for what is officially called the Tech One Campus/Alpha Site.

New county work at the airport, unrelated to the UTEP project, may well include not only the building of a new runway, but the lengthening of an existing runway.

The runway work will require El Paso County to purchase additional land for a project that was originally outlined in the facility's 2021 business development plan.

​By Garry Boulard

Image Credit: Courtesy of Unsplash

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