The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority will cut the ribbon Tuesday on a new Customs and Border Protection facility at Toledo Express Airport, 12 years after it built a now largely unused Customs space in a different building.
The 5,000-square-foot facility inside the Toledo Air Associates hangar is expected to be staffed around the clock and, at least at the start, to benefit primarily business jets that fly in from other countries.
The “detention grade” structure will house biometric screening equipment, waiting and interview rooms, and office space, Joe Cappel, the port authority’s vice president of business development, said Friday.
“Hopefully, it will make things go very smoothly for cargo and corporate operations,” Mr. Cappel said, describing the project as “like building a building inside of a building.”
Van Tassel Construction Corp. of Ottawa Lake, Mich., built the facility under an $825,000 port authority contract. The port authority expects to recover about $600,000 of the cost through a federal grant.
Customs and Border Protection maintained an office in downtown Toledo through July, 2014, after which agents moved to a joint facility at Erie-Ottawa International Airport opened in 2012 to house Customs staff as well as two other Department of Homeland Security units.
The port authority had included 2,500 square feet of space for Customs operations in a 2004 project at the airport.
But agents continued to use the Ohio Building as their base until they moved to Port Clinton.
Mr. Cappel said getting agents out to the airport and Toledo’s Lake Erie port became even more difficult because of the longer travel time from Port Clinton.
Port Authority President Paul Toth said in September, when the port authority’s board of directors approved the project, that two cargo companies had recently been turned away from using Toledo Express because Customs agents refused to allow them landing rights.
Kristoffer Grogran, a regional Customs and Border Protection spokesman, did not respond to a message Friday seeking comment, but in September denied the agency’s service at Toledo Express had been reduced.
“We continue to service flights in Toledo on an as-needed basis,” he said then. “When travelers request landing rights, we staff it, but we are not there waiting during hours in which there are no flights.”
But Chuck Hartlage, a spokesman for Owens Corning, said his company’s international flights have had to make extra stops in Port Clinton so people on board could clear Customs inspections there before continuing to Toledo.
Restoring a local Customs presence will be “good news to Owens Corning” and also promote the Toledo area’s economic development, Mr. Hartlage said.
“The new facility at Toledo Express Airport will help make the region more marketable to international commerce,” he said.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
First Published April 23, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
