More than half of George Katsikas’s life has been tied to Burke Lakefront Airport.
In 1986, 40 years after Burke opened, Katsikas flew a Piper Cherokee plane for a flight instructor position while he was an aviation-obsessed sophomore at Purdue. He taught for years after graduation, started his own flight school after flying for Saudia Airlines, then, soon after 9/11, opened a Aitheras Aviation, a medevac company, out of a building beyond Gate 7.
“I’m talking over 12,000 hours of teaching pilots,” Katsikas said sitting at a glass-enclosed wing for a table in a meeting room at his office. “That’s three, fours of my life. Literally thousands of pilots along the way.”
All reasons why Katsikas, along with his neighbors, are holding to a fixed message as Mayor Justin Bibb and City Hall line up plans to shutter operations at Burke: We have value, we want to stay, you can just build around us.
On October 22, Bibb and County Executive Chris Ronayne sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to urge him, along with Ohio’s congressional reps, that a decommissioning of Burke was in the best interest of the region.
That followed the release last year of a study and economic analysis that showed Burke runs at an average net loss of around $1 million per year; flights have dropped 60 percent since 2000, and will continue to plummet; and Cleveland Hopkins and the Cuyahoga County Airport could “absorb most of Burke’s activities”—medevacs included.
But first, Bibb would need both the approval of both the FAA and local congressional members to even begin the lengthy shut-down process for what Bibb and Ronayne described as “an underutilized airfield.”
“This is a once-in-a-century opportunity for Ohio,” they wrote. “We have a historic opportunity to assemble a continuous downtown waterfront that can accelerate the promise of unobstructed shoreline access, economic vitality, and world-class design.” (Three days later, Detroit opened its newest riverfront park.)
With Cleveland recently coming to terms on the Browns’ departure to Brook Park, and a $100 million payout from the Haslams for demolition of the current stadium, lakefront development work, and assorted community benefits, the question of Burke’s future is again at the forefront of local leaders. (Bibb’s administration noted it will lean on the Haslams’ connections in Columbus and D.C. to help lobby for the airport’s closure.)
Those whose work depends on Burke are, unsurprisingly, against the notion of shuttering the airport.
In mid-November, ten of the thirteen companies working out of Burke wrote Duffy, as well, urging the transportation secretary to see things from their point of view.
Calling themselves the Lakefront Airport Preservation Project, or LAPP, they framed Burke as an untouchable public good, with its fueling services, air traffic control, aviation history museum and other services that “cannot be sacrificed for fleeting political gains.”
There are 281 jobs tied to Burke. And a combined statewide public investment of $19 million in the past two decades. Burke has to stay in operation on the lake, they said; the choice to close it is nothing less than “misguided and shortsighted.”
“The best use of this property is an airport,” they wrote, urging the city to collaborate “with local leaders, aeronaurical users and the public to preserve the use of Burke Lakefront and find new avenues for investment in the current property as it exists today.”
But will anyone actually invest given the current state of affairs? On Wednesday, with the exception of tenants lugging storage boxes and a stray tour group, Burke’s main terminal seemed more like a dying suburban mall than a hotspot for the latest in aviation tech.
“We would love to stay here; we don’t want to have to move,” Alexandra Lausin, the director of the International Women’s Air & Space Museum, told Scene from her office, underneath a hanging model biplane.
Lausin pointed to the hundreds of visitors a year who find themselves stolling to Burke after a Rock Hall or Science Center jaunt. “I think there’s a lot of value, a ton of value being here,” she said. “I think the city should consider how they can build up what’s already here.”
Which is precisely Katsikas’s stance.
“Why can’t the two just coexist?” he said, suggesting housing developers could eye south of Gate 7 in the future. “In my mind, a multi-purpose use of this land makes more sense.”
Katsikas balked when asked if he felt City Hall was listening to him, or others for that matter. He talked to consulants. He said a city representative visited Aitheris in the fall, and the talks were somewhat positive.
“But the problem is that the administration is not looking at all the options,” he said. “Instead of bringing in investment and bringing the asset we have here to some higher value, they’re just shutting the door.”
“I agree,” Tim Dixon, the company’s chief finance officer, said. “If you step back and envision what this could look like as mixed-use with a tilt towards investment—it’s going to look different.”
Meaning: another airline, or new airline tech. Meaning: an outpatient hospital for its transplant recipients. Or just beefing up what Burke already has—upgrading its aviation schools, or even bringing back its own restaurant. (Aitheris capped off a $100,000 update to their dispatch center in September.)
“If it’s appropriate, I will support it,” Katsikas said. “One hundred percent.”
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