Optimism Soars for Airport: Officials Are Confident Redevelopment Will Boost Hickory Airfield
By Hannah Mitchell, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Jan. 28–HICKORY — Pilots brag about the Hickory airport. For a small city’s airfield, it has a first-rate runway, state-of-the-art lighting and, unlike many airports its size, a control tower.
But last year, the city-owned airport lost what could be its last commercial carrier when Delta Air Lines left. It has no space for more airplane hangars, especially those big enough to house corporate jets whose owners might want to open or grow businesses here.
And because Delta left, the city could also lose federal money to operate the control tower and pay for capital improvements — the kinds of amenities that help attract more business.
Despite all the problems, city officials and people who use the airport say it’s poised for a new, perhaps even better future than the days when major airlines called it home.
“We have a great airport,” said city councilman Brad Lail, who was chairman of a council-appointed task force that studied ways to make the airport successful. “A lot of communities don’t have that. We are 85 percent or more on our way to a really vibrant deal.”
City leaders are studying plans to convert the airport into a community facility that feeds on corporate, tourist and other noncommercial traffic.
Those plans center on a proposal to close one of the two runways, opening up space for more hangars. Advocates of the idea say that more space would drive the airport’s resurgence.
New projects also include a Sabre Society museum in the airport terminal building and an air traffic control training program in concert with Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute.
“Everybody here at the airport is working to make this a bigger and better place,” said Jim Malcolm, a member of the Sabre Society.
Signs of life
A month after Delta pulled out, blaming too few passengers, City Council appointed the task force to advise it on airport development.Eight months later, the task force recommended a list of steps the city could take to build up the facility.
Though the group advised continuing to court commercial service, its members acknowledged that attracting another airline is unlikely. So they also recommended other ideas.
Already, two recommendations are becoming reality. This month, City Council signed a three-year lease with the Sabre Society to use part of the terminal building for a museum.
And Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute hopes to start an air traffic control training program at the airport this fall.
The buzz of activity has people upbeat, a turnaround from the days after Delta left, said Pamela Craig, owner of the airport’s new restaurant, Froggy Pete’s, which replaced the old Runway Cafe in December.
“I have not encountered anyone who’s not had a positive attitude,” Craig said. “I think that we had become stalemated here. Delta left, and it seemed like nothing was going on.”
Key to success?
Of course, it will take more than tourists, college students and diners to turn the airport into the economic development engine city leaders want. That’s why the task force recommended other key changes in direction: opening up more land for hangar development and the city taking on a more direct role at the airport.
The task force suggested that the city sell aviation fuel through an after-hours self-service fuel farm. It also recommended opening more land for hangar development, possibly including an old landfill on the airport’s west side and extending Clement Boulevard to expand the north ramp.
One idea, though not in the task force’s final report to City Council, seems to have risen above the others as the possible key to reinventing the airport. Task force members discussed closing the airport’s shorter, secondary runway, which is used just 7 percent of the time and is mostly for convenience.
City officials researched the idea and then asked the city’s airport engineering firm to draw a detailed schematic laying out what such a development could look like.
The firm suggested 66 hangars of various sizes could be built along the closed runway over the next 20 to 30 years, and pilots could use the runway as a taxiway. City Manager Mick Berry said the firm’s findings indicated closing the runway would have no significant negative impact on airport operations.
The city may already have lost some new companies because there isn’t space for larger projects that need lots of acreage, said Scott Millar, president the Catawba County Economic Development Corp.
Millar said state officials asked him four or five times in the past three years about space at the airport for air freight or aviation-related companies. He responded with drawings of parcels that might be made available if the city opened up more land.
“I don’t know what the obstacles were,” Millar said. “Of course, clearly, availability of properties at the airport was an issue.”
Fixed base operator
The proposal to close the runway has gained support, in part, because some pilots, city officials and others interested in the airport’s future say the city has few other options for developing the asset.
Surrounding land is developed or poses expensive obstacles to development, and the city has no space for more hangars on existing property.
Most of today’s hangars are controlled by Profile Aviation, the city’s contracted fixed based operator.
FBOs typically sell airplane fuel and maintenance, lease hangar space and offer other services, such as chartered flights and instruction.
Profile became the fixed base operator at Hickory’s airport in 1996 after buying out the prior operator. It has since built new hangars and acquired others, giving it control of all but two hangars on the property.
No other company, or even the city, can build more hangars without more land, and prospective businesses must negotiate with Profile for hangars and other needs.
In addition, because it is the airport’s only FBO, Profile sells all the fuel and provides all the other services except the restaurant and some rental offices, so it can charge what it wants.
“(Profile) so dominates the airport and so limits the ability of the city to cover the cost of the airport that the task force was kind of astounded by it,” said Steve Ivester, a task force member who keeps his private airplane at the airport. “We were very disturbed by the concession agreement.”
Though Lail said Profile is a quality FBO that Hickory is fortunate to have, he also expressed concern. “It is problematic that Profile has control of a lot of real estate out there in their leases,” Lail said. “They are able to set fuel prices. That’s something I think the council ought to look at, is the city selling fuel.”
But Berry said Profile has improved the airport by helping the city build a new terminal for private aircraft, building new hangars and offering better service than prior operators.
“They don’t have control of everything,” he said. “The city still has authority, they still have to ask our permission to do things. They don’t have blanket control. They’ve invested private dollars out there, as well.”
But now that the focus has shifted from commercial aviation, the city needs “to evaluate its relationship with the FBO,” Berry said, “especially if the council chooses to close the runway. We need to define who’s going to develop that, what it’s going to look like.
“We have talked about different models other cities use. Some of those would require a different relationship between the city and the FBO,” he said, though he wouldn’t elaborate on the type of relationship.
Profile owner Carroll Smith said the airport doesn’t need more hangar space, just a better area business environment.
“We don’t have a great deal of people beating on our door to put up hangars,” Smith said. “There’s no demand here.”
But if the city pursues the runway closing plan, Smith said he would probably want to be involved in it. “We’ll be involved as deeply as we can and as deeply as they want us to,” he said. “We’ve always worked great with the city.”
Smith wouldn’t comment on criticism of Profile’s control of airport holdings.
City staffers are now developing a business plan that would make the hangar development a reality, exploring what the city’s role would be and whether other parties might be involved. They plan to take a proposal to City Council this spring.
Already, some council members like the idea. Councilwoman Jill Patton, who served on the airport task force, said closing the secondary runway would be a big step in the right direction. “Maybe we’re not landlocked.”
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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