Study shows that moving Naples Airport could cost as much as $1.6 billion.

As talks about moving the Naples Airport continue, more information has come to light about how possible the move would be and how much it might cost.

According to a consulting company that the city hired, moving the airport would cost between $1 billion and $1.6 billion. The company posted its final draft study, which gave an overview of how much each of four possible locations for a new airport would cost and how easy it would be to get there.

The project is still just being thought out, but this study gives the Airport Authority Commissioners a chance to move the plan forward, according to a recent article by Mahmoud Bennett of Fox 4.

A real estate agent in Naples named Christel Johnson said, “We could not find a single person who uses the airport, rents space at the airport, or wants the airport to be moved.” Johnson has been actively opposing the relocation plans, and hundreds of people have signed a petition he created a few months ago.

“There is one board member that’s definitely going to push for it,” she said. “But I think the rest of them are very sensible with common sense, and they’re listening to the majority of the public, the people that use the airport, and they’re going to say, ‘Who’s going to pay for this?'”

The Airport Authority study says that moving the airport would take between 15 and 20 years. Even though there is opposition in the area, the study does have supporters.

“That little site we have, which is only one square mile at the airport now, has really outgrown its space,” said Joseph Migliara of the Old Naples Association.

The anticipated cost shocked Migliara, but he claimed that in the long run, the move makes sense because of the noise, the county’s expansion, and recent accidents, such as a plane crash on I-75, which may indicate that the local airport is becoming too large.

“So, yeah, I think we should think about it for a long time and find a way to move the airport to a place that can serve the whole county, since it’s now starting to work as a regional airport. It is no longer a public airport,” Migliara said.

At its next meeting on August 15, the Naples Airport Authority Board of Commissioners is likely to talk about the study.

This article originally appeared on FOX4.