A 10-year master plan study that could spur the relocation of Greenwood Municipal Airport is expected to be released within six weeks.

The city’s Board of Aviation Commissioners and Indianapolis-based consulting firm RW Armstrong have been exploring expansion options for the airport, which was built in the 1940s amid open fields but now is surrounded by sprawling medical offices and commercial development.

Officials at the city-owned airport are immersed in a detailed federal process required to submit a plan to lure more corporate-type aircraft that could lead to a new location on the city’s eastside.

“It’s part of the process that you would normally go through when doing a master plan,” said Karla Price, project manager at RW Armstrong, adding that the study has been ongoing for about a year.

“Because of the constraints on the current location, one of the options you look at more closely is moving somewhere else.”

Mostly recreational planes buzz around the 230-acre airport, located west of Emerson Avenue and south of County Line Road. It’s a prime piece of real estate which has become a popular area for new medical offices and retail strip centers.

“We’re kind of hemmed in right now,” said Jeffrey Colvin, president of the aviation board.

“Our community’s success has actually been a detriment to the airport,” he added. “We’re glad it occurred. We’re just a victim of our own success, basically.”

Officials are eyeing certain benchmarks that would increase the airport’s chances of luring more corporate aircraft and pave the way for an expansion.

One key figure is the length of the sole runway. Currently at about 4,900 feet, the strip falls about 100 feet short of the 5,000-foot minimum for runway length preferred by corporate pilots.

“The pilots feel safer,” Tony Molinaro, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, said about the 5,000-foot benchmark. “They want something they know they can trust every time.”

Another key figure is 500, the number of operations — which consists of a takeoff and a landing — that the FAA requires each year of the corporate-type aircraft to justify a 5,000-foot runway.

The Greenwood airport attracted about 400 of those operations last year. Officials, as part of the master plan, are seeking input from corporate leaders in Central Indiana that might shy away from using the airport because of the runway’s length.

“We’ve got to look at what happens now with people avoiding Greenwood because we have a shorter runway,” Colvin said. “We want to hear from the business community — Do they feel a larger airport would be beneficial? — and see if it would aid their businesses.”

The master plan study is a lengthy process.

The aviation board must submit the plan to the FAA because the airport, which is sustained through hangar rentals and other user income, and not property taxes, also receives federal funding — which has totaled nearly $13 million over the past 25 years.

An FAA review could take up to five months, Price, of RW Armstrong, said. Federal officials would either approve the plan or suggest changes, which would then begin a move toward a possible relocation of the airport.

If a relocation is approved, then a slew of analyses would follow, including environmental and airspace studies, at both the local and federal level.

Also, the current airport would have to remain in business up until the moment the new one would open.

No potential sites have been selected, Colvin said, noting the entire process could take 10 years or more.

“It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight,” he said. “We don’t want to get our hopes up that it will even happen at all.”