One of the things that happens when you try and pave a runway is cost creep. That runway only needs to be 50’ wide. A bid goes out to pave and someone says we should make it to 121 standard for scheduled air service. Before you know it width is doubled, weight capacity tripled, a PAPI is added, runway edge lights, remote Wx ect..
What started a a relatively low cost simple resurface becomes 10 times as expensive and never gets built. This is before we start the discussion of potential kickbacks that get larger as the project grows more complex.