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Airport Economics 101 - Part 1 - Click here for Part 2.
Questions regarding the need for a Macon County Airport runway extension are answered in part by the environmental assessment completed for the project. According to the document, further development in the form of additional hangers and the development of small industrial sites cannot take place until the completion of this extension. By D. Linsey Wisdom
News Editor
Controversy continues to surround the extension of the Macon County Airport as residents question claims of economic impact and recent unique archeological finds at the proposed runway site.
Officials have claimed financial impact, job creation, essential infrastructure and possible industrial expansion as key indicators to justify airport extension. But, when residents have asked for details from the airport authority, explanations are rarely forthcoming.
“The need for the runway extension at Macon County Airport is two-fold. First, the purpose of the Macon County Board of Commissioners, the Airport Authority and the Economic Development Commission in using the airport as a focal point for economic development is in response to a real need for promoting that development in the county and in the Southwestern Region,” reads the Environmental Assessment (EA) report on the project. “Second, the current use of the airport indicates that the existing 4,400 [foot] runway has reached its limits to safely accommodate the present air traffic and suggests the likely success of using the airport to accomplish development objectives.”
Airport Authority Chairman Milles Gregory said, first and foremost, safety is what the authority is concerned about.
“The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] wouldn’t fund this for economic development,” Gregory said, adding that the benefit from an extended runway would include economy.
A larger runway could impact the tax base by attracting more visitors and aiding local businesses— like Drake Enterprises and Caterpillar —who have both voiced support for the runway extension.
Caterpillar, at this time, does not use the runway, said Gregory, but would if it met safety standards.
As for Drake, Gregory mentioned both Drake’s existing business and the performing arts center under construction.
“Phil Drake has the new performing art center. Performers travel by jet these days and it would be good to have a local airport that would allow people to land safely.
“Drake is our biggest user already. To him alone, with 600 employees, it’s a huge asset,” Gregory said.
Initial questions from the public regarding economic impact stemmed from a 2006 document from the N.C. Department of Transportation, which indicated an estimated $8 million in financial impact as a result of the local airport.
The figure calculates direct, indirect, and induced (successive spending as a multiplier of direct and indirect) impact, not specifically county revenue.
Dave Thomas with the DOT division of aviation said the 2006 report was a follow-up to a similar study completed 10 years ago.
“We feel those numbers are actually very conservative,” he said. “We knew it would be stunning numbers for some people.”
The figure is derived from a “bottom-up” survey initiated by the DOT, he said.
The survey was initially sent to all airports in the state, identifying users of each airfield. Then, additional surveys were sent to each company in the county that used the airport, questioning the impact on that company’s revenues.
From that information, the financial analysis was derived.
“We did not extrapolate any numbers. If we sent out eight surveys and got four responses, we only used the information submitted from those four responses,” Thomas said.
Chairman of the Airport Authority Milles Gregory It’s a huge economic lever, he said, from individuals who come in to the county to spend money and buy homes, to businesses that move cargo or people through the airport.
“The piece of it we didn’t even try to evaluate was access – who wouldn’t be in the area if the airport were not there,” Thomas said.
From the Macon County Airport survey, 122 jobs were identified that were connected in some way to airport use. In terms of payroll, that’s $316,000.
“Obviously, $316,000 divided by 122 doesn’t amount to full time positions; a lot of those jobs are impacted at fairly low levels,” he said.
In the last 10 years, $6 million has been invested in the Macon County airport, said Thomas. In that same time frame, financial impact increased by 150 percent, jumping from $3 million to almost $8 million.
A major thrust of economic impact, which residents have questioned the authority about, has come from a loosely created plan for industrial expansion at the airport.
Economic Development Commission members have been quoted as saying there are no “definite” plans for industrialization of the area. Yet, the EA clearly states, “Planning for further development by the construction of additional hangars and the development of small industrial sites with particular needs for close proximity to the airport have been put on hold until the runway extension is completed.”
Using Franklin-based company Duotech as an example, the report referenced the company’s CEO who lives in Florida and is a second-homeowner in Macon County. The company employs about 50 to 60 individuals with the CEO regularly commuting between Florida and North Carolina.
“Duotech is an example of the type of development on which Macon County wishes to focus its efforts. The county’s proximity by air to the Atlanta metropolitan area is a tremendous resource to seek small, environmentally friendly companies from that area desiring to relocate or expand with multiple locations. The county’s development objective is to expand its reputation as a second home location to that of a business destination,” reads the report.
No one has identified a concrete plan for industrial expansion, although efforts made by the county in 1995 were identified. According to a December 2007 article in the Macon County News, those plans did not come to fruition due, in part, to lack of water and sewer. Industrial expansion resurfaced in the last two years as a planned school construction could have brought water and sewer to the area. That plan, however, fell through.
One stumbling block in development efforts is the data recovery process required for identification and preservation of Native American artifacts and possible burials at the expansion site.
Initially, cost prevented the authority from providing 100 percent recovery at the five-acre area impacted by the runway extension. Airport Authority Milles Gregory has previously said the cost would have jumped from approximately $700,000 to $2 million.
Last month the airport authority was able to report that while actual data recovery would only take place at 25 percent of the site, 100 percent of the site would be scraped and mapped – a form of survey that does not include recovery. Additional grant funding is being sought for this portion of the project.
If further development continues at the airport, it is unclear if the archeological work will have to be repeated or expanded.
If a plan exists for industrial expansion in the area, the impact of additional recovery is unknown.
There are plans for capacity improvement at the airport, which would involve both additional hangar construction and relocation of Airport Road. The multimillion dollar project wouldn’t begin until 2014, according to DOT authorities, if funding were available at that time.
Gregory said that according to state airport association meetings, the trend is that more business and travel are moving to smaller jets. The current length of the airport is a safety problem for businessclass jets to land and take off at the airport.
Gregory said that nearby Andrew- Murphy airport has a runway of 5,500 feet. With the national safety standard for landing business-class airplanes being 5,000 feet, he said, Macon County is at a disadvantage.
“In making us more attractive for businesses and industry looking to relocate, we just can’t compete,” he said.
A broader economic impact comes from the safety improvements. The National Air Transportation System identifaies that, given the sparsely populated area in the Southwestern Mountain Region, the longer airport in Macon County could be vital for providing landing space for other aircraft in distress. Macon County is centrally located to three major airports, which could benefit from the safety feature.
The Federal Aviation Administration states that for each life saved in a distress situation, there is a cost-equivalent of $3 million.
County pushes on through discovery of rare find Last week, the discovery of a previously undocumented archeological find – palisaded walls from the 1100 A.D. period, raised more questions about the project’s completion.
Airport Authority Chairman Milles Gregory said the project will move forward as planned, but is doing so in a way designed to preserve the historical find at the site.
“We are spending all of this money out there not to destroy what’s there, but to preserve it,” he said, reiterating the project was redesigned to disturb as little earth as possible.
He said that the entire project is being documented, photographed and will be assimilated into books for the historical society and the Macon County Library through the project’s completion.
“When everything is complete, it will all be covered back up and preserved in perpetuity,” Gregory said. He indicated that all finds will be left intact, and if another organization is interested in studying the site at a later time, the site will be preserved.
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