Burke Coalition Argues Lakefront Airport More Profitable, Important Than City Realizes

Earlier this year, Ward 15 Councilman Charles Slife convened his colleagues to dive into the mechanics and questions surrounding Burke Lakefront Airport and the possibility of closing it in the next few decades. Why shouldn’t the city? Slife’s committee heard. Burke was losing upwards of $1 million a year.

On Wednesday, in Council’s first Burke-related session since the summer recess, a coalition of eight airport experts, former commissioners, student pilots and local proponents convened to give City Council their pleas as to why Burke should stay open.

Their main argument was simple: Burke isn’t the financial burden you’ve been told it was.

Since his first term, Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration has been adamant about exploring other ideas for the 450 acres on Downtown’s northeast end. Ideas including park space, promenades, hotels , a youth sports complex and a 18-hole golf course were thrown around in concepts earlier this year.

Kyle Lewis, the head of the Lakefront Airport Preservation Partnership, a growing coalition of Burke tenants to defend the airport, showed up Wednesday with colleagues geared to convince Council that those ideas would be more of a strain on the city’s coffers than what Burke could be with the right investment.

Burke and Cleveland Hopkins operate mostly off an enterprise revenue model pulled from finances from the two airports along with a spattering of funds from the feds. Cleveland picks up, on average, $900,000 of extra support, Lewis said.

“In 2018, that was as low as $158,000,” Lewis told Council. “Burke is not a deficit to the taxpayers that the administration has been carrying.”

They attempted to sell Slife and Council on a view that the airport, which has been on the lakefront since 1947, as a vital reliever airport and spoke in the wheel of the aviation system. Not an isolated strip of runway for the privileged flyer.

The FAA, which hasn’t yet done a study on closing the airport but is generally against closing operations, is on record as being against the idea of shuttering Burke. This summer, Senators Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted told News 5 that shutting down Burke to make way for a lakefront park was pretty much a “non-starter.”

A report provided by Lewis stated Burke produced a statewide economic output of $200 million—including from the annual Air Show, its two flight schools and longtime medevac tenants, like Aitheras. The same report suggested Burke was on an upward swing “trending towards 50,000 operations per year.”

That good news is what Aitheras founder George Katsikas said is why he was considering investing millions into his medevac facility. An operation spanning decades, he reminded Council, and stretching several partnering airports across North America.

Councilman Charles Slife, who kickstarted town halls on Burke’s future earlier this year, seemed open to a caveat on what the coalition painted as a kneejerk reaction — closing Burke without clarifying how it’s funded. Credit: Mark Oprea

A tight network of emergency organ flights that, he said, would not be possible without Burke being Burke where Burke is today.

“But what I want you to really focus on is Cleveland,” he said. “Every mission is coordinated from Cleveland. Every aircraft is supported from Cleveland. Aircraft depart from Cleveland. Missions originate from Cleveland. Dispatch is centered in Cleveland. Our maintenance is headquartered here in Cleveland. Revenues return to Cleveland.”

“That means when our network expands,” Katsikas said. “Cleveland benefits.”

In lieu of Bibb’s park and development vision, Lewis’ coalition instead urged Slife and Council to consider a meaty upgrade to Burke to buff up its relevancy in today’s fast-paced and high-tech world of aviation. A new master plan, which could even recommend new cafés or housing on-site, could even be funded by the FAA, not Cleveland, several noted.

Many who spoke on Slife’s side seemed to have been swayed at least somewhat by the coalition’s testimony.

Only Councilman Austin Davis seemed unswayed in his view Burke should be shut down, coming back to the ebbs and flows of operations and the idea that, no matter what Burke does, Hopkins is largely subsidizing it.

“So, while taxpayers may not be implicated, a whole bunch of taxpayers fly through Hopkins,” he said. “Just to point it out, why am I paying every time I fly out of Hopkins for Burke?”

Lewis responded by reminding Davis, it seemed, of Burke’s influential fixture in the wide network of flying.

“It’s cheaper for the airlines to subsidize Burke to the tune of $900,000 than it is for them to assume a billion-dollar runway if Burke was to close,” Lewis responded. “And that traffic would have to go to Hopkins.”

Last year, Bibb and Scott Skinner, the head of the waterfront nonprofit, said a study showed that redeveloping Burke into park space and hotels could amount to about a $3 million per year tax benefit, along with a one-time impact of about $800 million throughout development.