The St. George Regional Airport is one scoop closer to having its first air traffic control tower.
Plunging their golden shovels into the red dirt, state and local leaders broke ground Aug. 11 on the tower’s construction. It’s anticipated to be up and running by the summer of 2027.
Having local eyes on the skies will allow the city to add more flights to more places, said Mayor Michele Randall, further linking southwest Utah with the world.
“I think it’s — no pun intended, but — groundbreaking for St. George,” she said. “It's a game changer to have our own tower here.”
Air traffic in Washington County’s largest city has risen right along with the region’s skyrocketing population in recent years.
The airport is on pace to surpass 350,000 passengers in 2025, more than doubling its total from a decade ago. Yet, those flights are directed remotely by traffic controllers in Los Angeles because there’s no tower on-site.
“That makes no sense,” said Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, who was in St. George for the groundbreaking. “We want to try and do all we can to get away from California, not become more dependent upon California.”
That independence comes with a price tag, though.
St. George officials asked Utah for $15 million last year to cover the project’s cost, and state lawmakers approved the money during the 2024 legislative session.
“When we decide where to put taxpayer dollars, we look for projects that make a real difference in economic development and everyday lives of the Utahns that we serve,” Schultz said. “And this one checks every box.”
One of the boxes this project is meant to check is safety. That issue has come to the forefront in 2025, with crashes in Washington, D.C. and Toronto and communications outages in Newark and Denver sparking fresh concerns.
As the St. George skies become more congested, Airport Director Dustin Warren said a tower will be vital to keep flights running smoothly. Each of the past two years, commercial passenger traffic has grown by 18%, he said, while the Federal Aviation Administration suggests a healthy growth rate is more like 3%. So the airport is way above those expectations.
“We're just trying to keep up with what the area is doing,” Warren said.
Along with Washington County’s booming population, now over 200,000 residents, the area also welcomes millions of tourists annually, with more and more people heading to Zion National Park and other attractions.
When completed, Warren said the five-level tower will stand more than 80 feet tall on a mesa next to the airport’s existing runway. It’ll take around 16 months to build and will then need to be approved and staffed by the FAA. The goal is to have the tower certified by June 2027.
When the Legislature allocated the funding, the early expectation was to open the tower in 2026, but Warren said the process of finalizing the site took some time. Still, he said the $15 million from the state should cover everything the project needs.
The airport currently offers around a dozen flights per day to destinations that include Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix and Dallas. It added a daily route to Los Angeles in 2024, and airport leadership has expressed interest in connecting to additional West Coast cities in the future.
Without a tower, Warren said, the airport would not be able to increase the frequency of flights needed to meet demand.
“That's huge,” Warren said. “If your community around you is growing and the facilities needed to keep that economic development going don't grow with it, you're not going to make it.”
Warren’s team is also working on designs for a major expansion of the terminal, adding around 70,000 square feet. Those designs are less than half complete, he said, and there’s no timeline for that project yet.
