Burke Airport, Which Loses $1 Million a Year, Makes Most of Its Revenue From Parking

Burke Lakefront Airport lost $1.7 million last year and averages $900,000 in the red, city officials told Cleveland City Council Wednesday in ongoing discussions about the possibility of closing the airport in favor of development and lake access.

And a third of Burke’s revenue comes not from aircraft operations but from 660 parking spaces used by downtown workers, visitors to the Rock Hall, and Browns fans.

That budget sheet reality tickled many at Council’s Transportation & Mobility Committee hearing on the airport’s future. It was the second hosted by Ward 15 Councilman Charles Slife, who’s holding four gatherings this spring to collect information ahead of a decision to keep Burke operating or open the 450 acres to possible parks and development.

A March 2024 impact study commissioned by the city showed Burke may be a better financial bet if developers reimagine the area. A neighborhood of hotels and apartments, the study showed, could bring in up to $3.3 million of tax benefits to Cleveland each year.

Hopkins and Burke are operated out of a fund separate from the city’s general fund. Airlines end up covering any losses by passing along landing fees to travelers out of Hopkins.

But it’s still a million dollar loss a year. And the upsides of a future without Burke — income and property tax collections, etc. — are much better more attractive, Jessica Trivisonno, Mayor Bibb’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief Strategy Officer, argued across the table.

And, she said, the obvious plus of giving Clevelanders two more miles of access to Lake Erie.

“The big takeaway here is that Burke’s use as an airport is a major constraint on the site,” she told Council.

“At the end of the day,” she added, “there is a moral reason for us to have two miles of lakefront space be accessible to the public.”

Since the Bibb administration made clear its preference to shut Burke down as quickly as the law lets it, aviation groups and longtime businesses in Burke’s terminal and hangars have framed the shutdown as premature and lacking clearmindedness. A relocation of medical flights or military landings to Hopkins or the County Airport could become impractical due to added driving distances, they argue. Burke’s location downtown is irremovable from its value.

The city has pretty much responded with a shoulder shrug.

On Wednesday, Port Director Bryant Francis told Council that the city’s in talks with Signature and Aitheras, Burke’s two largest aviation-related tenants, to move their operations to Hopkins or to the county’s airport in Richmond Heights. Any hospital-bound flights, he said, “can be redirected” there, too.

But Slife warned his colleagues the future also comes with a pricetag.

“I’ve heard people say, ‘Just turn it into a park!’” Slife said. “Well, that adds to a $20 million number.”

Which still may very well be worth it, Trivisonno contested.

Cleveland could end up throwing in cash for a neighborhood of hotels and apartments, like it did for the Huntington Convention Center. But there would be more money made from that development, Trivisonno suggested, over the decades than from keeping Burke as is.

Because Burke’s land would be absorbed into both Cleveland’s North Coast Waterfront Community Authority and the city’s downtown TIF area, more money would be shuffled into a fund for street repairs and new bike lanes. (The Air Show, after all, is tax-exempt, many reminded Council.)

And parking? Several hinted that those Coast Guard workers or Rock Hall visitors would continue to pay to leave their cars on that lot off Marginal Road. Or even at a lot close by.

So, why not just repave Burke with striped concrete and collect parking revenue forever?

“We’re laughing, but that’s what this map seems to indicate,” Ward 7 Councilman Austin Davis said. “If we just turned [Burke] into one giant parking lot, this would be an asset for the city rather than a $1.7 million albatross around flyers’ necks.”

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