When journalists do a story on a subject, it is best to go look at what those in the know tell you is important. So the day after talking to Cleveland city councilman Martin Keane, who serves as vice chair on the city’s transportation committee, I found myself wandering around Voinovich Park at the end of East Ninth Street.
The question for Keane the night before was why the city of Cleveland keeps Burke Lakefront Airport open even as the number of flights it services has dropped off a cliff, declining more than 60 percent since 2000. It’s a question many others are asking too. Why does the city need an airport on prime downtown, lakefront property when it’s not used by many planes?
It’s part of the broader conversation on Cleveland’s over-supply of tarmacs. Northeast Ohio’s other two airports — the Cuyahoga County-run airport in Richmond Heights, and Cleveland Hopkins — have also seen declines, which isn’t surprising: These airports were planned to serve a need when Cleveland had lots of people. Cleveland doesn’t have lots of people any longer, so the need simply isn’t there.
“We have three airports in this county and really only need two,” Cleveland attorney and longtime Cleveland City Planning Commission head Tony Coyne told Scene. “Since we have to keep Hopkins because of the airlines, it comes down to county and Burke. One of them is no longer needed. We have to figure out which one should go.”
And yet the city hasn’t done a study recently on the pros and cons of keeping Burke open or closing it. Why not?
Councilman Keane said that Burke is an “asset” as an airport, and that if I wondered whether it should be closed and developed in some other way, I should check out the new lakefront development over near Voinovich Park, behind the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, for evidence it should not.
“Burke is a tremendous asset as an airport,” Keane said. “I think the biggest study going on right now is the waterfront development around the dock, north of the [FirstEnergy] Stadium and in Voinovich Park. Burke serves its purpose as an airport, and the success of the development we have [at the waterfront development around the stadium] is a good story.”
So I went down and wandered around for an hour or two as I was instructed to do.
Two new development buildings are at the end of East Ninth Street. Harbor Verandas, behind the Rock Hall, is under construction and will possibly be open before the end of the year. It will be a three-story, 16-unit apartment complex, with 1,700 square-foot, two-bedroom units renting for about $3,700 a month. The other building is already done: a modern Mexican restaurant, which was nearly empty for lunch on a drizzly Tuesday.
One of the reasons the Harbor Verandas is only three stories is that Burke Airport is a few hundred yards to the east. Sources have said privately that a 10-story apartment building made better sense economically, but height restrictions around the airport made it harder to do. (Specifically, the building as approved needed more grants and public financing than a taller building would have needed.)
The city opened up these projects for bid about five years ago. And the next phases — doing a similar mix of housing and office and retail on the old port acreage north of FirstEnergy Stadium — are likely more years out from putting shovel to ground. The height restrictions from being next to an airport are again holding things up. Still, they are nice little projects that might move Cleveland’s wandering development eye toward the lake, as the populace seems to want.
But you cannot think of lakefront development in Cleveland and not think of this 450-acre airport as the hole in the donut of future planning. While wandering around in the drizzle on this Tuesday in March, not one plane took off or landed in the two hours I was there. I thought of how people wanting to live in a $3,700 a month apartment overlooking Lake Erie might want a big park nearby. Or stores to shop at. Or offices. Or a place to work. Or a bench on a trail where you can bring your binoculars to look at birds, or catch the sunset over the water. Or all of that.
How big is Burke? Think of it this way: You could drop Cedar Point on it and still have 90 acres left over. It could accommodate two golf courses. How many thousands of people could live there depends simply on how many you wanted to live there.
Some urban planners and city officials have said closing Burke should not even be considered until other projects are completed, which is a silly excuse, because it really has nothing to do with the question itself, and the process is not a short one. This is about whether or not it might be a good time to decide whether to get moving on long-term planning on something that will likely take 20 years.
Lots of information here has been misrepresented by politicians, the development community and the private airplane industry for years, for their own purposes, and we will get into that. But while I was looking around Voinovich Park and waiting for a plane to emerge from the fog, I thought about what longtime Cleveland urban planning expert Hunter Morrison had told me a few days before.
“One of the biggest challenges Cleveland faces,” Morrison said, “is that it has to resize its oversized infrastructure. What to do with Burke airport is a part of that challenge.”
Cleveland city councilman Kerry McCormack said the same thing in a different way. “There is no doubt about the fact that we should look at whether we need to keep Burke open as an airport or not,” he said. “Go down to Edgewater Park on a weekend. People now love to be near the water and we don’t need to speculate on that. This huge amount of property downtown has the ability to be recreated into a variety of uses that can be very diverse.
“I don’t think any city in this country has this much property that they own along a waterway like this,” McCormack said. “The least we can do is see what our options are.”
Excuses, Misperceptions and Tumbling Numbers
Dan Brady is the current president of the Cuyahoga County Council. He was a three-term Cleveland city council member (1986 to 1996), and also served as a special advisor to mayor Frank Jackson to develop a strategic business plan for Cleveland Public Power, on the lake just east of Burke. He too is perplexed about why the future of Burke is not considered as its numbers go so far down.
“We use to discuss its future somewhat when I was on [city] council, but that is not being done now and I have no idea why it is not,” Brady tells Scene. “[Burke] can be lots of things — park property, housing offices, a city planner’s dream — and having that type of property on the lakefront is something other cities don’t have.”
“I don’t want to speak for the mayor, but from my perception the mayor is not open to conversation about this,” Brady says. “But it is in our best interest to be doing studies now to prepare for when [closing] does happen.”
(What does Jackson think and is he, in fact, not open to the idea? A city of Cleveland spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story, as usual, so who knows.)
To get at the crux of the Burke issue is to first look at the data and facts of what it once was and what it is now.
The plan for a Cleveland lakefront airport was first announced in 1927, part of a trend to capitalize on this newfangled aerospace business. Airplanes were the new toys of the rich, and Cleveland had plenty of those. Charles Lindbergh had done his first solo crossing of the Atlantic that year, and many cities — especially in the Northeast and Midwest — thought they would need as many airports as possible to compete in the transportation game.
Hopkins was already opened at this time, and doing big business. When considering a downtown airport, Cleveland had an express purpose in putting it next to the lake: The new airport would “cater primarily to amphibious plane operations and will have all the facilities for sea plane and hydroplane operations,” the city stated in its Cleveland Region Airport Plan in 1946. The airport opened in 1947.
The irony was that the notion of sea plane popularity and usage was mostly gone just about the time Burke opened up. Landing planes on lakes was popular and, for the military, useful during World Wars I and II; but after the war, it faded from view as the airport industry found sea planes generally limited in use to delivering mail in Alaska. Cleveland, always tragically behind the curve on trends … . But we digress.
In order to accommodate sea planes, Cleveland’s downtown airport was built on mostly clean fill dumped in the lake, meaning it was a combination of building and highway construction excavation from the period. Some dredging from the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie was also used. A garbage dump occupied about 20 to 30 acres of the airport on the far northeast portion of the property until it closed in the late 1950s. The Ohio EPA found in 1987 that the dump area posed a “low threat” for land or surface water contamination and would not be considered for any “remedial action” list of properties that had hazardous materials problems.
“The perception that Burke is built on a garbage dump and cannot be used for anything else is a public misperception that refuses to go away,” says Ted Esborn, a Cleveland attorney who worked in the city’s law and health department in the ’80s and ’90s. “The EPA has never found this to be a superfund site, and to the extent they built the terminal and a high school on it, it is obvious you would be able to build other structures on it as well.”
Ohio EPA spokesman James Lee told Scene that the Ohio EPA “is not aware of any additional sampling or studies at this property” that would indicate any environmental issues from the landfill, and that the state agency “is eager and available to work with the city, if assistance is needed.”
The other misperception of the airport is that Burke is a net economic benefit for the city.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Activity Data Base System (ATADS), Burke had 100,321 takeoffs and landings in 2000. By 2010, that number was down to 53,987. Last year, 2017, it had basically dropped off to 38,571. So between 2000 and 2017, Burke’s flight numbers have dropped by 62 percent.
Those are striking numbers made even more striking by this fact: About a third of those 38,571 takeoffs and landings are for the pilot flight schools located at Burke, which has nothing to do with business, travel or shipping of goods.
During that same time period, Hopkins and the Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights also saw significant declines. According to ATADS, Hopkins had 331,899 operations in 2000 and 122,392 in 2017. The Cuyahoga County Airport dropped from 65,177 to 20,106 in that same period. To put it another way, the three airports in Cuyahoga County had 497,397 takeoffs and landings in 2000 and 181,069 in 2017.
That means 361,328 fewer planes landed in this area last year than in 2000, so the argument that Burke is needed as a “reliever” airport for Hopkins for when it gets too busy — a guffaw-inducing excuse Frank Jackson has trotted out time and time again — is a strange interpretation of basic numbers.
One more small, but relevant, number has changed as well. The location of Burke Lakefront Airport in downtown Cleveland might have had some time advantages in 1970, when the city population was 750,000 and about double what it is now. Less population means less traffic, and the downtown airport has less advantages on the time scale than it once did.
Driving time from Burke to Public Square is eight minutes, but from Hopkins to Public Square is only 17 minutes. The car time from Burke to the Cleveland Clinic’s main campus near University Circle is 16 minutes, while Hopkins to the Cleveland Clinic comes in at 20 minutes.
This is not to diminish the advantages of short travel times. Sitting in a car for several hours instead of several minutes can be a difference maker. But that is not the case here. The differences are in minutes. Which brings us to the last point.
One of the excuses used by Burke proponents is that University Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic use Burke for the transportation of organs for transplant purposes. It is implied that patients will die if Burke is closed, because the organs will not be transplantable if the travel is too long between their surgical recovery and placing them in the bodies of the living.
A big problem with that argument? Organs last somewhere between four and 24 hours after recovery, depending on which ones you’re talking about, and the difference in travel time between Hopkins, Burke and the County airport to UH or the Cleveland Clinic is about eight minutes.
And speaking of transplants, there was some speculation that Cleveland might offer up Burke to get Amazon to move their secondary headquarters here. That speculation was preposterous on so many levels. The biggest problem is that in order to give Amazon the 450-acre Burke property as their new relocation campus space, the airport would have to be closed first by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA does close airports, but it often takes many years to do so.
Would Amazon jump in as Cleveland’s new economic partner — and cast aside the other cities to do so — if the land Cleveland was offering was not available until the feds said it was cool? I think we all know the answer to that.
And speaking of the FAA …
The FAA Lie
“The FAA won’t let you close the airport, so why bother trying.”
It’s been said for decades when talking about Burke, an adage trotted out by naysayers and politicians.
“Give me a break; that is a loser attitude,” said Robert Simons, an urban planning professor at Cleveland State University. “The attitude is that we have way too much development, so why try? Most every city in the country would be excited about having space like this, but people in Cleveland refuse to get excited about this? That is pathetic.”
Simons’ view is echoed often, but only privately. It’s why the vast majority of Cleveland — be they council members, hospital nurses, pothole fillers, lawyers or media members — all trot out the same reason Burke can never close: “We can’t do it because the FAA won’t let us.”
That has a little bit of truth to it, but the key word is “little.”
“The first thing that happens when cities request that their airport be closed is that the FAA says no,” says Ronald Price, the principal with QED Consultants, a Florida-based aviation consulting business that advises cities and counties on their aviation business, including how to close up airports if that is good for the local government. Price’s company worked for the city of St. Clair, Missouri, which got the FAA to close its city-owned airport last November.
That airport, which had fewer flights than Burke, is about 50 miles west of St. Louis, and the city thought the 150 acres along Interstate 44 could be more useful for development than for the occasional plane. So about 10 years ago, they started to explore closing.
“After the FAA told them no, the city of St. Clair did research, on how the flights had declined, the way they could use the land economically better, how much the airport was costing the city, and why closing it would not affect other airports nearby adversely,” Price says. “Sounds like Burke airport a bit, doesn’t it?”
Price said that after they prepared their research, the FAA said, “Maybe.” The St. Clair mayor and council then asked Missouri politicians — the governor, the two U.S. senators, and U.S. House members — to get on board. Backroom talks between Congress, the city and the FAA then put the closing of the airport in play, and Sen. Claire McCaskill introduced a bill in 2014 “to release the city of St. Clair from all restrictions, conditions and limitations on the use, encumbrance, conveyance and closure of the St. Clair Regional Airport.” That bill, passed by both House and Senate, was signed by Pres. Barack Obama in 2014. The airport closed for good in November 2017.
A similar type of closing occurred at Blue Ash Airport 16 miles northeast of downtown Cincinnati in 2012. The 250-acre airport opened in 1921 and had seen its aviation usage decline over time. The airport was owned by the city of Cincinnati, and it sold half of the airport to the suburb of Blue Ash for a park and the rest to private developers for housing and other projects. The airport traffic there was absorbed at other local airports in the Cincinnati area.
“It is not easy to get the FAA to approve airport closures,” says Peter Kirsch, a Washington, D.C., lawyer specializing in aviation law and policy. “But if Cleveland wants to, it can more than likely prove that Burke costs too much money to remain open, has better economic use, and that the flight operations can be handled elsewhere.”
“And remember,” Kirsch says, “the FAA does what Congress tells it to do. So if the Ohio delegation expresses to the FAA it wants Burke closed, things start to move. But it has to start with the mayor of Cleveland. Nothing gets done unless he wants to get things started.”
Two hurdles: Airports get grants from the FAA, and as part of the acceptance of those grant, the airport owner (in this case the city of Cleveland), usually agrees to stay open for 20 years after the last grant was received, and to pay back those grants to the FAA if the airport does close.
The FAA says it has given Burke about $23 million since 1982, including some grants last year. Does that mean Burke cannot close until 2037 and Cleveland has to pay $23 million to do so?
The answer is murky, but certainly not set in stone. The first part is that the grants are amortized, meaning the amount owed for a $10 million grant from 2010 will be less than for a $10 million grant from 2017. Most think the $23 million in grants to Burke are really worth about $10 to $15 million, and given that Burke costs the city about $1.5 to $2 million to operate annually, some think the FAA grant money payment is actually a way to save money in the long run.
As far as not being able to close until 2037: If Cleveland starts now, that can be negotiated by Congress, and the 20 years is, more often than not, a starting point from which the FAA can move downward. Of the dozens of airports closed by the FAA in the past few decades, none took 20 years to go from the point of seeking permission to the point of closure. More often than not, the period was in the seven to 10 year range.
Congress can take care of those things, as Missouri’s McCaskill did for St. Clair. “The case for the FAA to permit the city of Cleveland to close Burke is much stronger than any of the recent closures because of lack of use,” said Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at Reason. “That is very obvious. The ability to absorb those flights at other airports, and the market value of the reuse of those 450 acres, would be a good mix that the FAA would have a hard time saying no to. And even if the FAA wanted all $23 million from the grants they gave to Burke, the sale of parts of those 450 acres for private development would dwarf what they would have to pay back to the FAA.”
Poole also said to look at Santa Monica Airport in California: It’s recently announced closure is proof that closing a big city urban airport is something the FAA is now open to.
The Santa Monica Airport is less than 10 miles from Los Angeles International Airport and, between them, those two had almost five times as much air traffic last year (777,000) as Burke and Hopkins had (160,000).
Santa Monica has been working on closing the airport for about 10 years, and in 2017 the FAA agreed to let them do so, effective in 2028. The reasoning? The city thought the 250 acres would be better for the city as a park, and that the neighboring glut of airports in Southern California could easily handle the flights.
“This is a historic day for Santa Monica,” Santa Monica mayor Ted Winterer said in the announcement about a year ago. “After decades of work to secure the health and safety of our neighborhoods, we have regained local control of airport land. We now have certainty that the airport will close forever and future generations of Santa Monicans will have a great park.”
In 2014, Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson was asked by former city council member Zack Reed about whether the city might want to close Burke for lakefront real estate development. His answer? “There are between 75,000 and 80,000 landings and takeoffs at Burke every year … alternative use for redevelopment at this time is not realistic.”
There was a big problem with Jackson’s comments. And not for whether Burke is well suited for “alternative use for redevelopment” either. Burke hadn’t had 75,000 to 80,000 takeoffs and landings since 2005. In reality, Burke had 54,000 flights in 2013. (And that number could easily be absorbed by Hopkins and the county airport, experts say.) He was 30 percent off.
Nothing against Mayor Jackson on this. It’s how people are. If you have no intention of considering closing an airport like Burke, no consideration that maybe 450 acres of prime lakefront property in downtown Cleveland might be a city game changer if done right, then there is no reason to have the latest facts correct. Because the facts really don’t matter.
Cleveland attorney Richard Knoth shakes his head at how the city of Cleveland has handled this issue. As a former port authority board member, Knoth has been studying Burke’s land use for more than a decade, and he is surprised the city has been able to bury the closing of Burke as an issue for so long.
“The flights have been declining for almost 20 years and no one thinks that is relevant?” Knoth asked. “There is not a long-term approach to leadership in this city, and that really explains why this asset is so underutilized. The FAA could not contest this, because the numbers for closing it are there. To think otherwise is to ignore the facts.”
Not Just a Reasonable Conversation, But a Necessary One
In the long run, the main issue here is whether the city should do a study to lay out the pros and cons of closing versus keeping the airport open. In the past, the city has tended to pay for studies that predict future growth and to keep Burke open.
In 1999, a study predicted Burke would have 132,000 flights by 2017. Another study in 2007 said Burke would have 90,000 flight by 2016, even though the numbers had fallen between 2000 and 2006. Both studies suggested the city would need more hangers and new runways to keep up with the big growth, and that closing Burke would mean the region would lose $81 million in economic impact because of the closure.
Longtime Cleveland State University urban planning professor Norm Krumholz sees it differently now.
“I don’t think there is any question that this is a good location for development, although either the mayor’s position or the FAA position is likely enough to keep it open as an airport,” he told Scene. “But what is reasonable is to do an economic analysis of the comparative benefits of it remaining an airport or closing it and building on it. It is very reasonable to request to have that done at this time. And that includes the cost of each, the estimated cost of redevelopment versus the cost of maintaining it. And then a political decision can be made. That request is not only reasonable, it is necessary on this subject right now.”
Ohio State University professor Ned Hill sees things the same way. “We might find out there are problems with building on some part of the 450 acres, and no problems on other parts,” he said. “We might find out that there are some national real estate developers who think this is a great investment. And we might find out there is little market for a mixed-use development in Cleveland right now, and that a big park is all it could be. But we don’t know what the answers to all those questions are until we look at them in a smart and open-minded way.”
That open-minded attitude is all that most are asking for right now. Burke does have a small passenger service that flies a small number of passengers to Cincinnati each week, and it might be good to know if that passenger service has a growth potential that makes it worthwhile.
One the other side of the coin, the city needs to quit lying about how important Burke is to the city economy. For example, Cleveland officials said Burke was going to draw extra flights into Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, the World Series, and the three NBA Finals. But the numbers say the opposite: The flights into Burke were fewer during those specials events than they were in the same months in previous years.
At the very least, Mayor Jackson can be honest, solicit a comprehensive study, and then, as Krumholz says, make a political decision based on the results.
In the meantime, professor Hill has a suggestion. “I say we should just close it on our own and build a Scottish links golf course,” he says. “We can play golf while the FAA sorts it all out. Might be the best way to handle this.”
Related Stories
Cleveland Conducting Second Study to Gauge Future of Burke Lakefront Airport
This article appears in Apr 4-10, 2018.
Burke lake needs to go no matter what. Its a shame to have so much space wasted blocking the most valuable asset cleveland has.
Really good in depth report. Nice work!
If Burke can get closed and rezoned for something better, that’s great. But I’d hate to just see it get sold to some fast-talking, deep-pocketed developer who is only interested in short-term profits. Look at the Galleria, and apts/condos just east of the Galleria. Someone made money off getting those built, but they weren’t part of a sustainable plan, and are now a waste of land and building materials. And the land where the new apts getting built by the rock hall should have been left as public space, possibly further developed for public use. Terrible non-planning. We need someone with a 100-year vision for that land, not sold to the highest bidder.
I agree that it makes sense to close Burke or Cuy County, but why is there no discussion on closing County? Between the two, it makes more sense to me to close Cuy County airport and move the operations there to Burke. Burke is more suitable for safety and logistical reasons, for starters.
I don’t want an apartment out there in the howling winds off of Lake Erie. The weather was an issue when building the new tower and home on the East Bank of the Flats. They must design sidewalks and doorways so that they are blocked by adjacent buildings.
First Energy stadium will be obsolete in another ten years. Let’s knock it down and move the team to a sheltered site inland instead. The wind at NFL games in November and December are legendary…the gales of November!
And here we go again with people’s complaints about Burke. Yes, it’s an opportunity, and no, we really don’t need the airport. But the city as SO MANY lots and neighborhoods that have to be redeveloped. We haven’t even developed the land around Browns stadium yet. Or the rest of the Flats.
Offering it to Amazon was a good idea- it met Amazon’s requirements of land, accessibility, and transit. We should keep Burke in our back pocket- bring it our when the right opportunity comes along. In the meantime, if you want to perform a study on it, have at it.
Nothing to see here folks, as this article is a great example of what Scene mag does best which is cut and paste. The same writer offered up these same thoughts some three years ago at Scene Magazines partner in hate,
Belch Magazine( okay it’s called Belt Magazine but I digress). If you don’t know and why would you Belt Mag is obsessed with BKL for some reason.
Burke is a great recourse for now. Yes there should be a long term plan but until we fill up all of the parking lots and vacant buildings in the city with new development let’s not thrust another 450 acres on the market when there is so much other work to be done.
It’s a shame that the existing City leadership is acting on the basis of an agenda that is unknown to the public. The current renewal Cleveland is currently experiencing would be greatly enhanced by a mixed-use development on the lakefront. The London Docklands, Hamburg’s HafenCity and especially Amsterdam’s Ijburg can serve as models for successful attractive options for Cleveland. A high density development plan integrating a short extension of the Waterfront Line might lead to (sorely needed) demand and utilization for this transit facility.
Where is the point of view from the businesses and revenue created by having such a valuable airport downtown? Once its gone it will never ever come back. We are not building new airports. Look at what happened to Meigs Field in Chicago. They destroyed a valuable asset and sold it of to clear channel for a convert venue. A disaster. Short term gains for such a huge loss of a valuable asset called Burke Lakefront Airport would be a shame in years to come.
Yeah, look at what happened to Meigs Field in Chicago. They destroyed a valuable asset and turned it into a concert venue. Daley the Younger sent bulldozers in the middle of the night to carve big Xs into the runways nd make it unusable for the planes that were stranded there and had to be trucked away.
Maybe Mayor Frank can do the same thing some night, so super-rich people can pay San Francisco rentals to live in a $3,700 a month apartment overlooking Lake Erie instead of the Bay, and have a big private park to walk their yappy little dogs. Or they can shop at yet more pricey stores selling their high-end crap while millions of square feet of retail space lie vacant elsewhere in the region. O they can stroll past more vacant office space. Or they can do brunch at even more upscale eateries for foodies. Or fooderies for eaters.
Either make nearly all of the space into a public Metropark, with a bench on a trail where Joe and Josephine Sixpack can bring their bring binoculars to look at birds, or catch the sunset over the water, or ride a bike, or all of that…or else just STFU and leave it alone. Hey, our movers and shakers and our pro sports teams and the Rock Hall inductees still need a place to land and park their Lear jets, doncha know.
MOTOR SPORTS PARK! DRAG RACING, INDYCAR, FORMULA ONE, ECT. Please! It would bring so much MONEY to Cleveland. Please don’t do a golf course or condos. Cleveland has so much potential. Don’t waste it. Please, please, please!
Once again the ill-informed and the stupid come out with their opinions on Burke and always negative. The reality is, weather plays a great part in operations at all airports and sitting at Voinavich park in months like March can limit and will limit operations at Burke. Getting the opinions of so-called specialist like those who sit behind a desk and never see the light of day, puts less credibility into this writers article (with the first outside opinion by the last name of “Coyne” now that’s a credible name).
Follow the money. Who contributes to the mayor and politicians supporting Burke. Mayor Daley from Chicago had the best intrests of his city in mind when he cut x’s in the runways of Meigs field in 2003. Check it out.
As far as the traffic for the events previously this year, such as the RNC, NBA FINALS, and WORLD SERIES, these events utilized the airport to its full capacity. Although the federal government ask that Burke be a gateway airport to the RNC and subsequently it became a military base for all branches, its strategic importance to the event was vital. The NBA FINALS AND WORLD SERIES brought people from all over the world and high lighted this airport and Cleveland as a crown gem in the Midwest. Lets make sure you have all the facts and know what you are speaking or writing about before you go around and feel something is unjustifiable or useless when you know nothing at all. Driving the shoreway and looking at the airport for a few short minutes, does not constitute a belief it is not viable or important to our area. Spend a week and observe the comings and goings of this airport, and speak to the people who work at Burke before making the ignorant assumptions and comments.
No need to close Burke to put up apartments until Cleveland gets crime under control. Crime makes Cleveland one of the most undesirable places in the USA to live. People cant walk, or even drive in safety in this city. Carjackings and armed robberies every day all over the city. Criminals are treated like the victims and get released back onto the streets quickly. We are more concerned about the dignity of those willing to rob you, kill you, or live off welfare with your tax dollars, than we are about protecting law abiding people and taxpayers.
Whos going to develop this land at Burke? Who would feel safe with thugs showing up at all cleveland attractions to prey on the optimistic, decent people trying to live in the city. Until Cleveland purges itself of the crime and those that support crime and the dignity of criminals (e.g., the NEO media Group), theres no need to close Burke.
Cleveland has incredible cultural and popular assets but its infested, INFESTED, with the scum of the earth and a federally funded system that finances them.
I really appreciate this reporting. Whoever that ‘Eat Me’ guy in the comments section is should be forced to count the number of planes taking off and landing at Burke in 2018 by hand, from a tent, just outside the airport.
Burke strikes me as so bizarre. You can poke a lot of holes in potential development, but certainly there is SOMETHING better we can begin moving towards than an airport in slow decline.
We are spending bunches of bucks to investigate the possibility of a Hyperloop, but we won’t look at developing some prime land under our own nose? The comparison to Cedar Point’s footprint was crazy to me. What developer wouldn’t drool over a site of that size, near multiple highways, near multiple population centers? Let’s have some vision here, guys!
The truth is, Truth, that people…middle class people, suburban people, even WHITE people…are slowly starting to trickled back into the city and fill up all those pricey apartments and townhouses that are popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. Hell, yes, there is crime in Cleveland, and hell, yes, people get mugged and robbed and carjacked and murdered, but Cleveland is NOT the cesspool you describe.Plenty of people have no problem walking or driving most of the time, in most places. You just have to know where you need to avoid, and I am sure you do. But the lakefront is not one of them.
I know firsthand there is a thug problem, because I live in one of the more heavily targeted neighborhoods that the thugs prefer, because there is actually stuff that people own here that is worth trying to steal and fence. Butt I see right through your smoke-screen (excuse the pun) quite easily. You are obviously talking about black folks when you start using those tired right-wing, race-baiting buzzwords and catchphrases–dignity of those willing to rob you, live off welfare, tax dollars, law abiding people and taxpayers. Your keystrokes and spacing aren’t all that’s black and white.
Then there’s that worn-out word “safe” again, and thugs showing up, and “prey”, and ” the optimistic, decent people”, when you really mean “suburban white-bread folks” who are STILL afraid to go downtown. Like you probably are. I bet you’re one of those East Siders who haven’t been downtown in years and when you go anywhere, you need to be able to drive right into a parking garage and walk through a tunnel so that the “scum of the earth” that “infests” this city doesn’t INFECT you. Or rob, mug, or kill you.
Your rant belongs elsewhere, at the comment boards of that NEO Media group you hate so much. or at a rally for His Orangeness, the next time he shows up in one of the distant suburbs. Enjoy staying home in your fenced-in back yard with your white trash friends and family. Don’t bother coming into the city….it’s scary and dangerous and we city folk can sure use the available parking space you don’t occupy and the tickets you don’t buy. Go barbecue some meat and watch some wrestling. Enjoy yourself.
I think Jackson should wreck the place the way Daley did and get rid of the airport. There are much better uses for that space. It’s mostly fill so tall buildings are not an option. How about something like the Navy Pier in Chicago, but facing the Lake instead of going out on the Lake in a pier. The front of the buildings could have big garage-style doors that can be closed as they are in Chicago in the winter, protecting people from the savage winter winds. I also like the idea of the motor cross sports parks someone mentioned above. It’s far enough away from most housing so the noise wouldn’t be a problem. Another idea for some of the land is a small amusement park for little kids like Ontario Place in Toronto. There could also be trees, gardens, walkways, and playgrounds. There need to be more inexpensive activities for families to do Downtown. There are so many more interesting things we could have on our lakefront than that damned airport!
How about we focus on the abandoned East side neighborhoods first? Fix what you have before moving onto new projects. Its great that you want to build up high rise apartments and condos (battery park) that bring people into the city, but no regular Joe can afford these new complexes, and are left with declining neighborhoods and infrastructure. And maybe its crass but I’m not all about bringing in more upper middle-class that just feed into the downtown/w 25th “Bro Douche-bag” culture. I just want a nice place to go with my family for dinner on a Friday night without having to dodge drunken frat boys. These people can obviously afford our current housing. So invest in that. But the new building raises property values which is great for some but it also has already affected housing cost in the more desirable neighborhoods like Gordon Square and Ohio City. Try and focus on the low income and lower middle class first please. I’m pretty sure you have more that 450 acres in The East side and Midtown that you can work with.
The biggest problem with closing Burke is what may be built on the property. Given Cleveland’s political climate – uber liberal – the odds are, it will be a giant public housing project that will generate zero taxes and increase crime. Cleveland caters to the lowest common denominator, that is why it has lost over 60% of its population.
If Cleveland were to utilize this property in the future, it needs to put something there that will actually produce tax revenue – high end housing and/or business – anything else will simply be another drain on the small segment of Westpark homeowners that pay the bulk of the city’s taxes.
Wow, this article sounds Justin like it was written by a greedy property investor or contractor…
Absolutely on the money. Where does this money go? Some into low paying jobs in everyday inside the airport jobs, and the rest benefited by the uber-rich. Of course the outer area on the lake will be taken in by higher income individuals. The rest? To those of us in the actual middle class. When we can start pushing main downtown towards the other thriving areas of Cleveland we will see real progress. It’s about time we utilize our lakefront and this is stop two after the Euclid lakefront project.
For those above here complaining about crime, I challenge you to take a walk around main downtown Cleveland. I do it at least twice a week working my social media marketing job. It is not the “crime invested dump” you describe, but a thriving vibrant city filled with caring and wonderful people looking to create a bustling and forward thinking downtown metropolis.
Here we go again with the”close Burke” arguments. Sure, 450 acres is a lot of space to do something with. The real problem rests with the end result. It will come down to who ends up buying the land.
How many other projects started out with good intentions of doing something for the city and people of Cleveland, only to fail for some reason, or only benefiting a few? East bank, West bank, Galleria, Tower City, the stadium, the convention center, and so on.
Who wants to see the view of Lake Erie obscured by medium to high-rise condos that only a few can afford? $3,700/month for a two bedroom condo? Sure. Anyone can afford that.
A nice pro quality golf course? Great! Let’s just dump more chemicals into the lake to increase the cyanobacteria of blue-green algae that shut down the water plant in Toledo a few years ago. Our water intake would be right in the middle of it.
Another shopping mall? How many go to Tower City and Galleria?
The article points out that take offs and landings are down at all three airports. How does that make Burke worse? Airlines and general aviation have been suffering nationwide for the last 15+ years.
The best option would probably be to have the Metroparks take over the land. They seem to do a pretty good job judging by what they have done over the years. It would be protected park land open to all, and would most likely be managed properly.
Honestly, can we trust the local politicians to guarantee that? Look to the past for that answer.
The city has a lot of brown spaces that can be built upon, but are not utilized. And until the crumbling infrastructure of the neighborhoods, streets, and facilities are taken care of, the best option is to just leave it alone as suggested above for a “rainy day.”
I haven’t heard anyone mention the fact that Hopkins has an entire terminal with 30+ gates just sitting vacant. Seems that terminal could easily serve all the light aircraft that run through Burke.
As a pilot, I can tell you that shutting down BKL will result in less business men and women traveling to Cleveland to meet face to face with our businesses. Hopkins is too far away to make it worth their while, plus the Fixed Base Operations (FBOs) at Hopkins are expensive and inefficient. Sure, the landing numbers may be down. However, these number of landings should not be what you base an airports worthiness on. What matters is convienence to the prominent and frequent travelers that mean the most to our local businesses and economy. Also, the landing numbers are largely affected by the fact that the city of Cleveland charges some of the highest landing fees in the entire country! (Landing fees are another term for tax). Thats the reason that United was forced to reduce its daily departures from Hopkins from 199 departures per day to 40 per day on their busiest day. This is not meant to be a political post, but facts are facts. This Democrat run city is taxing the landing traffic away from BKL and CLE.
As a long time defender of Burke Lakefront Airport, I have used the the bogus arguments that were debunked so well in the article. I attended and graduated from Aviation High School and worked at Burke when they had not one but two airlines operating there (Wright and Midway). I love the Airshow and look at Burke with great nostalgia.However, Cleveland has to look at the asset they have as opposed to the liability Burke has become. Cities don’t get opportunities like this often, it would be great to see Cleveland not blow this one like they have done in the past.
One closing option Mr. McGraw did not explore is what Mayor Daley did with Meigs Field in Chicago. Meigs was, like Burke, a city owned airport in downtown. The mayor had city workers destroy the runway in the middle of the night in 2003, it never reopened. A fine was paid to the FAA, but the closing process was expedited. This was a pretty radical option, but the mayor had tried to close the airport for years.
I thought it was a well written article that hopefully opens the discussion on Burke Lakefronts future. It seems that it would be a good issue for a future mayoral candidate to run on.
They should turn it into a beach, much like Chicago did over 100 years ago. It would just be on a smaller scale.
Motor sports venue? I encourage people to head out to the flight schools at BKL. Flying a light airplane is some of the best motor sports entertainment you can have. Airport real estate is priceless…AS AN AIRPORT. You dont want to have people in 30 or 50 years saying those short sighted people back in 2018 really screwed the pooch when they decided to shut Burke down and we lost all the opportunity that transportation infrastructure could have made possible. Just me, me, me with no thought of the impact on the future.
As many have said, there is so much in Cleveland that needs to be addressed, there is absolutely no immediate need to look at closing Burke. A study on increasing utilization would be far more productive.
It takes a non-pilot to write such tripe. There’s a lot of money that flies in that way. I agree with others that BKL and Cleveland are stifled by the same kind of thinking that prevails in Cincinnati, my current home town (I’m from Akron, worked in Cleveland for decades). Heck, I intend to fly up my family to BKL and walk to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’ll probably spend more than a grand for an overnight, counting hotel, fuel, admission, etc. Or, I could go somewhere else. I certainly don’t visit Chicago without Meigs Field.
Treasury Department lands there planes there and that’s the sole reason it’s still open.
As a private pilot I have a different perspective here. Think about it this way. What if I went to every exit on the highway that we feel could be used for something else and cut it off forever? What if we kept doing that and never rebuilt another one. Sooner or later the highways would only be good for commercial trucks going to main exits. Every airport is an exit / access point to the sky. For a small plane with very small tanks if these so-called airports are all closed my airplane becomes useless. If I would be forced to use only large airports I would not be able to afford to fly at all the fees are out of my price-range at those airports. I grew up around small aviation and its my family’s way of life, why are all the people in this country ready to kill it?
Before moving to destroy a perfectly working airport, home to flight schools and a great alternative to CLE, Cleveland should look at redeveloping the eyesore-like derelict industrial areas at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river. Also, Burke is cut off from the city by a highway and train tracks and therefore will be hard to connect to
You’d think the loss of Meigs Field crippled Chicago irreparably…. Build something that gives the city an allure so people are enticed to come even if there isn’t a World Series, NBA Finals, or other big event.
Im an air traffic controller at Burke. Itll never close. Hopkins needs us. Also, its built on a landfill. Weve tried to build additional hangers to store aircraft in and all permits have been denied for years and years due to the hazardous chemicals under the surface. And yall think theyre gonna our apartment buildings or a shopping place? Crazy talk. . Move along.
This clearly biased op-ed loves cherry-picking data to support the writer’s argument while simultaneously glossing over significant issues. Burke is necessary, and there’s no way in hell that Hopkins could easily absorb another 50,000 flights.
The one thing that most bothers me about the naivete of the writer is that he has no concrete alternative use for the land, or that he doesn’t like the airport.
Wahh…
Suburbia is not something we should be racing towards. I wouldn’t be surprised if the writer has friends/family with a vested interest in cashing in on the land with little actual concern for the long-term effects of their short-sighted opinions.
The reality is simple: economies are cyclical. As long as the GOP is in control of the state, nothing will work long-term at Burke. My recommendation is to either leave Burke alone, or add funding to it to increase alternative airlines. I know when I fly down to Cincinnati next month I’ll be flying out of Burke. It’s a great alternative.
Don’t be a dumbass.
After determining the physical capacity of the complete 400+ acres for development, perhaps 50% of the total area should become a lake-front park, and the remaining area be developed into multipurpose uses with much residential and services for this residential community.
First of all, for the people screaming at each other on here about parkland versus development, what you dont realize is that is with such a huge piece of property that you can do both! You can have housing of various types in various price points. Houses on canals were people dock their boat at their back door, high-rises, and affordable student apartments. Protected beaches, running trails, and wildlife preserve area.
Secondly, if you go out to Hopkins, you will see and ENTIRE TERMINAL that was built for continental express airlines and is now completely unused! Why not make that the private club/terminal for the rich people in their Gulfstream jets? Allow their limousines to pull directly up to an access point near that building!
Lastly, the one thing that I would hate to lose is the air show, but like a prominent Cleveland developer recently told me, even if A large part of the land is unbuildable, the section all along the shoreWay is buildable and you could put high-rise development there and leave the old runway to use for IndyCar races, the airshow, etc. in the meantime.
Is there really demand for more park space or luxury apartments? Is there any positive economic impact of closing it and opening a profitless park? Doesn’t Burke’s lakefront runway make Cleveland more unique than a park or more half-vacant luxury apartments? Also, side fact, St. Clair, MO airport is sitting there still, vacant and rotting. That land has not, and is not being used for anything else. If you’re comparing a full metro area like Cleveland to a farm town of less than 5,000 people, that’s a problem. Also, not a great idea to discount public studies immediately before requesting one.
If the reporter wandered around a a drizzly and there were no arrivals or departures, the ceilings may have been to low for safe operations.
As s pilot, I use Burke. Hopkins isnt a friendly place for general aviation aircraft and Burke puts me near the city center, my destination.
I use Cleveland for meetings with vendors and employees. I used to go to Chicago until Midway was closed when mayor Daley illegally had the runway plowed up in the middle of the night. I know many business men who no longer set up meetings in Chicago because Midway, Chicago Executive, and Ohare (which is also not general aviation friendly) add too long to the trip downtown to be useful. When I fly in from Michigan, I dont want to spend more time commuting on the ground than it took me to get there.
I think this post gave me Cancer. An airport is an asset to everyone in the community, from the revenue it brings in to the new talent that is trained there. Once it is gone it never comes back. Watch the documentary titled One Six Right to see the awful impact stories like this have.
I am a pilot and do fly into the airport periodically. I would hate to see the airport go. I do see the dilemma of how to determine the best economic use of the land. My fear is a decision that will be made to the economic benefit of a limited number of developers. Lets not repeat the lessons learned from Meigs. If its a part of a long term economic plan that can show specific benefits that are indeed measurable, I wouldnt be happy, but I would accept the decision.
There is a sentence in the article that does mislead the readers. It states about a third of the traffic is for flight training, but that doesnt have anything to do with business. There are several issues with the statement. I sure that the FBO owners that provide the training would disagree that their operation has nothing to do with business. The same for the aircraft owners that leaseback their aircraft to the FBO, as well as the fuel distributor the puts fuel in those aircraft, and the mechanics that maintain these aircraft. These are all businesses that employee people.
The article dismisses that economic contribution as insignificant. Then there is a secondary impact. The airlines cant hire pilots fast enough at the moment due to the large pilot shortage caused by their mandatory retirements. Another caused to pilot availability is the lack of places to get training that are economically feasible. I can assure you that moving the training to Hopkins will not be economically feasible to either the FBO or the student pilots. If the airlines cant get the pilot numbers back up, that means cancelation of lower revenue producing flights, That may indirectly impact the area if flights are reduced. Per the article, flights are already in decline. This would just make it worse.
Figuring out the economic impact of an airport is a very complex task. All I can ask is that the analysis is complete and not rushed by a few individuals that are centered for their own short term economic gain.
I had a hard time getting through this article given how one-sided it was, but alas, I managed.
If you have declining population, building more expensive lakefront housing is not the answer. Its called being stupid with how you spend money. Its hard to think of something more depressing than half-finished or vacant luxury condos…except maybe the part where the city sells a public asset to private owners. Airports are often eyeballed by developers for space to build upand the people who profit are the developers. Not the citizens, who think they will get a new park (how much do those cost to maintain?), but private companies.
If there are extra gates at a commercial airport, they dont help the small aircraft. They dont use gates, the fees are exorbitant (and driven by city or regional government), and getting in and out of the airspace is more complicated and time-consuming.
The need for pilots is only growing. Burke could be well-utilized for a flight school as its not surrounded by residences, offices, and other structures.
Companies look at the number and location of airports when considering where to base operations or build new locations. Having a choice of airports is a huge advantage for Cleveland!
I realize Im talking to a wall, however. As we look at all of the technological advancements in urban air mobility, airports are a key part of the infrastructure. Lose one for a disappointing strip mall and you cant get it back, and you wont have all of the links needed for seamless travel.