Urbana Sells to Habitat for Humanity and Airport Report

From the News-Gazette coverage of last night's Urbana City Council meeting (agenda here, video here):

Council gives initial OK to land deal with Habitat

The Urbana City Council on Monday gave its unanimous, initial approval to selling city-owned property on Harvey Street to Habitat for Humanity of Champaign County. The property is at 909 N. Harvey St., near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and King Park. Habitat for Humanity plans to build an affordable housing residence on the site.

This sale now goes to another council approval vote to be finalized. If it is, it will save the city about $450 per year in maintenance costs incurred by the Community Development Block Grant, according to a city staff report.

The airport report (direct video link here) showed the highest traffic in a decade:

In other business, the city council received an update on Willard Airport from Gene Cossey, its executive director.

Willard added its second airline, United, last June, and Cossey said it hasn’t taken anything away from the airport’s American Airlines flights. That and the addition of some more American flights helped 2017 become “a record year over any other years we’ve had since 2007,” he said...

2017 also saw a new Willard website where flights can be booked directly and the addition of an Einstein’s Bagels — the airport’s first concessions offering since about 2000, Cossey said.

Coming to the airport this year is an automated parking system that aims to speed up the parking process.

Full article here.