TCC Buys Alliance Airport Land for Aviation Programs

By Sandra Baker, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Jul. 19–FORT WORTH — Tarrant County College has bought 25 acres at Alliance Airport, where it plans to build a facility in the next couple of years and consolidate the college’s aviation programs, now located at Meacham Airport and its Northwest Campus.

TCC, which has offered an aviation-maintenance program since 1967, said it will also expand its programming and possibly offer pilot training for the first time. Talks about a possible hangar and classroom building at Alliance have been ongoing for the past six years.

“We would like to get there as soon as we can,” said Floyd Curtis, dean of business, technology and transportation at the Northwest Campus. The next step is to design and build “an aviation center of excellence,” he said.

The site is at Alliance Boulevard and Heritage Parkway, in front of the airport entrance off Interstate 35W in far north Fort Worth. The college district said it paid $5.2 million for the land.

Curtis said he’d like to see the program at Alliance up and running by 2010 or 2011.

The program now has about 260 full-time students and has been running at capacity for quite some time, he said.

“We are involved with aviation all across the country,” Curtis said.

TCC’s program offers study in aviation maintenance and avionics. At Alliance, the college hopes to add studies in manufacturing composite materials and aircraft structure, and possibly open a flight-instruction program.

There are no public flight schools at Alliance.

Tom Harris, senior vice president of Hillwood Properties, which owns Alliance, said the airport will gain from having TCC’s high-ranked program at its airfield, in part because it will provide aviation-related companies there with immediate access to trained and licensed students.

“This gives us one more offering we don’t have today,” Harris said.

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