The second “fast track” construction contract on development of the Firehawk Aerospace complex in Lawton was approved Thursday by the Lawton Economic Development Authority.
Iron Pipe LLC of Tulsa was awarded a $3,288,000 contract to construct site utilities for the project.
Bid Package #2 includes site utility infrastructure and associated work, such as water and sanitary sewer lines, storm sewer, fire line and fire hydrants, natural gas systems, septic systems, utility connections, excavation, backfill, compaction, and related site utility improvements, records show.
Four companies bid for that contract. However, the lowest bidder withdrew its submission prior to execution of a subcontract agreement, said Ryan Herring of Lawton, the “construction manager at risk” on the Firehawk project. The $2.1 million bid was more than a million dollars lower than each of the three other bids. “Apparently there was a mistake in their calculations,” LEDA Executive Director Richard Rogalski speculated.
During its April 16 meeting, LEDA awarded Iron Pipe a $4,388,288 contract for demolition, site work and storm drainage on the 320-acre Firehawk site in northwest Lawton.
The dirt work “has to be done in 60 days so the concrete contractor can start,” Herring told LEDA’s board of directors last month. Rogalski said grading at the site started April 20.
“They’re working seven 12-hour days and have between 14 and 20 men on-site,” but do intend to take off Memorial Day weekend, Herring told LEDA on Thursday. A Herring Construction employee is “on site every day,” he said.
The Firehawk construction project “is being released in phases,” Herring told LEDA last month. The contract approved last month was “just one of a multitude of packages that will be coming out,” he said.
“Every single piece of equipment” for the Firehawk project “has an early delivery date,” said George Liddell, Firehawk’s senior director of operations. “Every group working on this project is being held to the same requirements of the end customer: the U.S. Department of Defense.”
The Firehawk complex will be built on a half-section of undeveloped land directly north of the Goodyear tire manufacturing plant, between 112th Street and Goodyear Boulevard. The site is north of what would be Gore Boulevard if the street extended farther west.
The land was owned by the Comanche County Industrial Development Authority. A purchase and sale agreement on the 320 acres closed on April 20, Rogalski told Southwest Ledger; LEDA now owns the property and leases it to Firehawk. In exchange for the land, LEDA will remit $1.6 million to the CCIDA: $500,000 up front and, starting in two years, four annual payments of $275,000 each.
“In no event” will LEDA’s investment exceed the $22 million that LEDA received in a grant from the Oklahoma Development Finance Authority, a document stipulates. Any costs above that amount will be shouldered by Firehawk.
The Lawton Industrial Development Authority voted April 28 to issue a note “or other evidence of indebtedness” of up to $8 million as a ‘bridge loan’ to LEDA, to jump-start “the costs of acquisition, development, and construction” of the Firehawk industrial manufacturing facility.
That loan is needed “to address potential timing differences for LEDA in project construction payments and receipt of grant funds for the project,” city records explain.
“We closed on the bridge loan Thursday,” Rogalski told the Ledger on Friday.
The proceeds from the $22 million ODFA grant will be awarded in stages, the Lawton City Council was informed. “Our first earning, about $1.7 million, was in December,” Rogalski said. LEDA anticipates receiving similar amounts monthly until December 2026 or January 2027, he said.
Final maturity of the “short-term loan” will be in 2029, a bond attorney told the City Council.
Firehawk Aerospace produces hybrid rocket engine propellant. The Addison, Texas-based company, which began operations in 2019, utilizes 3D-printed solid rocket fuel to produce safer, more efficient, and cost-effective hybrid engines for various applications, including defense and commercial space exploration.
The company predicts production will reach 1,000 pounds per day of propellant, enough to power 15,000 rocket motors annually. “It makes sense for us to be in this neighborhood, because Fort Sill is the training base for the missile systems that Firehawk is developing design concepts for,” Liddell told the Lawton City Council last July. Fort Sill is the home of the Air Defense Artillery School.