With a final turbo boost provided by a $100,000 grant, the Aviation Heritage Park Museum is ready to take flight.

Warren Fiscal Court on Thursday approved allocating the grant funds from the Bowling Green Area Convention and Visitors Bureau special tourism projects fund to help put the finishing touches on the 11,000-square-foot museum slated to open Sept. 23.

In the works for nearly four years, the museum will complement the static display of eight aircraft at the AHP site at Smallhouse Road and Three Springs Road.

The $2.5 million museum, to house artifacts and memorabilia related to the local aviators that AHP honors as its mission, is nearly complete. The grant from the CVB, said AHP board member Joe Tinius, will get the museum ready to open although fundraising will continue.

“We’ll use this funding for sidewalks, handicap-accessible ramps and all the finishing work to the site,” Tinius said on Thursday. “The building itself is 99% done, but we still have to get display cases put together and other finishing touches.”

The grant that comes from a CVB fund built on the local lodging tax supplements the years-long fundraising effort needed to build the museum that has the look of a 1930s-era airplane hangar.

“It’s part of the CVB’s mission to assist local tourist attractions,” CVB Executive Director Sherry Murphy said Thursday. “The more attractions we can add, the larger number of visitors we can attract.”

Murphy said this is the third grant from the special projects fund awarded this year.

“We usually do one or two per year,” she said. “Because of COVID, we had not received any requests for a while, so we had a little bit of a backlog.”

The CVB grant also will get the museum ready for the Oct. 11-14 annual reunion of the Red River Valley Fighter Pilot Association, to be held in Bowling Green.

That association, Tinius said, has helped with the museum fundraising. In turn, AHP has agreed to devote a portion of the museum’s mezzanine area to displaying artifacts collected by the Red River Valley group.

“They’ve really been helpful with our fundraising,” said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Dan Cherry, an original AHP board member. “Now that they have a home in this museum, their children and grandchildren will come to Bowling Green.”

Cherry, whose Vietnam War-era F-4 Phantom was the first airplane displayed at AHP, called the museum “a dream come true.”

“It makes me really proud to see the progress,” Cherry said. “Fiscal court has been with us every step of the way. I think most people would agree that this (AHP) is now a community asset.”

The museum will enhance that asset, including among its artifacts a Piper Cub of the type flown by pioneering female aviator Willa Brown, who was born in Glasgow.

Also to be included is a 1/15 scale model of NASA’s space shuttle that is currently owned by the National Air & Space Museum. It will help illustrate the story of Russellville native and Western Kentucky University graduate Terry Wilcutt, who flew on four space shuttle missions.

Despite the cost to build the museum, Tinius said admission to the facility is free.

“People come to view the aircraft on static display, and we don’t want to discourage those folks from coming inside the museum,” he said. “There will be areas where people can make donations.”

In addition to the CVB grant, magistrates approved a number of spending items Thursday during a meeting presided over by Second District Magistrate Tom Lawrence in the absence due to illness of Judge-Executive Doug Gorman.

Among the approvals:

•$17,194 to Conrad Floors to screen and finish all gymnasium courts at Phil Moore, Ephram White and Buchanon parks and the old Alvaton gym.

•$34,871.44 to Stewart Richey Service Group to replace a hot water boiler at the Warren County Regional Jail.

•$147,600 to Reassurance Solutions LLC for the purchase of 24 medical sensors for monitoring inmates at the jail. This project will be paid for out of the jail’s canteen fund, which comes from money raised from sales at the jail commissary and the sale of phone cards.

•$13,866 to Bluegrass Ballfields for the purchase of four football/soccer goals for Moss Middle School and Ephram White Park.

•$11,070 to Trane for replacing an air conditioning unit compressor at the county jail.

•$8,950.37 to Barren County Business Supply for Public Works Department office furniture.

•$31,444.88 to AAA Systems for installing security cameras at Buchanon and Ephram White ball fields.

•$37,500 to Lighthouse Auto Sales for the purchase of a 2017 Freightliner truck paid for by stormwater management.

The next fiscal court meeting is scheduled for Sept. 14 at 9 a.m.