CLEVELAND — A new alliance is protesting Cleveland’s push to close Burke Lakefront Airport – and asking Congress to reject the city’s request to legislate a shutdown.
The Lakefront Airport Preservation Partnership is urging federal officials to keep the airport open. In a recent letter to members of Congress and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the group described Burke as “critical national infrastructure” that’s at risk of being “sacrificed for fleeting political gains.”
The turbulence comes as Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and civic leaders are pushing for a shutdown, following years of debate over whether a city-owned airport is the best use for a huge stretch of lakefront land. In October, Bibb and Ronayne launched a formal effort to close Burke by asking Congress for help.
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“Closing Burke will create a lakefront that is accessible to all and make Cleveland competitive with the world’s most dynamic waterfront cities,” Ronayne and Bibb wrote in a letter addressed to Duffy, Republican Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno and Democratic Rep. Shontel Brown.
Now aviation groups, pilots and some airport tenants are pushing back – advocating for reinvestment in the airport, instead of reinvention of the site.
“The mayor’s request to close the airport is misguided and shortsighted,” members of the Lakefront Airport Preservation Partnership wrote in their protest letter, dated Nov. 17.
The coalition is made up of pilots and aircraft owners; air-charter services and flight schools; a company that transports hospital patients and organs; and a handful of existing Burke tenants, including a sports media business and the Cleveland National Air Show.
“The best use of the property is an airport. It’s been an airport since 1947,” said Kyle Lewis, the Great Lakes regional manager for airports and advocacy at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a nonprofit group that recently joined the partnership.
Last year, consultants hired by the city said that Burke has been losing money for years – and has seen traffic drop by roughly 60% since 2000.
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Lewis believes the city hasn’t taken full advantage of Burke.
“An airport does not succeed unless City Hall is behind it,” he said this week, during an interview with News 5. “And what I mean by that is allowing businesses to sign … long-term leases, or at least leases that make sense to the business to operate.”
Burke is what’s known as a reliever airport. It takes pressure off Cleveland Hopkins International Airport by handling smaller flights and overflow traffic.
The city’s consultants determined that Burke accounts for $76.6 million in annual spending. If the airport closes, most of the flights would be able to move to Hopkins or the Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights, the consultants found.
The biggest blow would come from losing the air show, which takes place on Labor Day weekend. No other airport in Cuyahoga County can host the show in its current form.
“The city is basically turning the lights off, which is very unfortunate,” Lewis said.
But Bibb and other proponents of a shutdown see a different future.
During an interview with News 5 last month, the mayor talked about the potential for a lakefront park, mixed-use development and new kinds of businesses.
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“It could be a vertiport,” he said, referring to hubs for air taxis and other aircraft that can take off and land vertically, instead of using a horizontal runway.
“And it could be a jobs hub,” Bibb added. “Right? Who knows? … There could be an economic development play here that we haven’t thought about quite yet.”
On that point, at least, the mayor and opponents of closing Burke seem to agree. In their letter to federal officials, members of the Lakefront Airport Preservation Partnership said changes in the industry and innovations, including air taxis, could be opportunities for the airport.
“(Burke) is strategically positioned to be advantageous in the support and operation of this new technology,” the group wrote to Duffy, Moreno, Husted and Brown.
But the mayor envisions much more.
“It’s time for us to make big plans, be bold, and take big swings,” he said in October.
The effort to close Burke is getting attention in Washington, D.C. In an interview with News 5 late last month, Moreno said he asked Bibb and Ronayne to write their letter seeking Congressional action.
Now, Moreno said, “the entirety of the community has to come together and tell us, at the federal level, this is what the community, as a totality, wants.”
He also wants to see a concrete plan for what would replace the airport.
“What we don’t want to do,” Moreno said, “is close Burke and have it be an abandoned airfield for 50 years.”
