San Diego Upgrades Underutilized Small City Airports with Major Project at Montgomery Field

San Diego's efforts to modernize and upgrade its two smaller municipal airports will take a key step forward with a $16 million plan to add nearly 60,000 square feet of new hangars and an aviation museum to Kearny Mesa's Montgomery Field.

The new proposal, which is headed to the City Council for approval this spring, would be the third major project at Montgomery Field in recent years — and the largest since city officials vowed to make the airport an economic catalyst.

Meanwhile, preparations continue for the first phase of dramatic renovations approved for Otay Mesa's Brown Field. Those upgrades will include three dozen new hangars, a large hotel and 1.5 million square feet of retail and industrial buildings.

San Diego officials have focused on modernizing the two smaller airports — smaller than San Diego International Airport — since a 2015 city audit said years of mismanagement had made them both underutilized eyesores.

The audit said both airports have the potential to generate significant revenue and become economic engines if they are managed properly.

In conjunction with soliciting development proposals for the two airports, city officials have launched an effort to create up-to-date master plans for each of them for the first time since the 1980s.

The master plans are scheduled to be completed and presented to the City Council for approval sometime next year, said Jorge Rubio, the city's deputy director for airports.

The new project at Montgomery Field, which is officially known as Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, is expected to continue positive momentum created by two recently completed projects.

Called Executive Airpark, the 26-acre project along the airport's southern edge on Aero Drive will attract new small-plane operators while sharply increasing city lease revenue and "fuel flowage" fees.

"This will demonstrate to other airport tenants that positive change is happening and that the city is committed to making Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport a world-class general aviation center," city officials said in a report on the project to the City Council's Land Use and Housing Committee.

The new project follows a $15 million development by Crownair and a $9 million project by Coast Aircraft.

The Crownair project includes a 16,000 square-foot building, two corporate hangars and an airport operations garage. The Crownair and Executive Airpark projects will be operated by the same staff.

Coast Aircraft has been awarded a large flight-training contract from American Airlines, sharply increasing the number of flights they've been operating.

The number of flights at the airport increased from 212,457 in 2018 to 252,945 in 2019. While no statistics are available for 2020, city officials said Montgomery Field was the busiest airport in California and the eighth busiest in the nation during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, because large commercial flights were rare.

Executive Airpark was chosen by city officials over rival developer Pacific Aviation Development, which proposed significantly more new hangar square footage but requested several changes to the city's proposed lease.

The Executive Airpark proposal includes new paving, new parking, 35,000 square feet of large conventional hangars, 24,300 square feet of medium conventional hangars and a 5,850-square-foot " Flight Club" lounge.

The project also would include a fueling area, a small aviation museum and possibly an air mobility hub to boost transit access to the site.

City officials say the project would encourage continued growth of general aviation, allow aviation businesses to prosper and provide needed services at reasonable prices.

The city's annual lease revenue would increase from the 26-acre site, which is now operated by Gibbs Flying Service, from $366,000 to $579,000. Annual fuel flowage fees would increase by an unknown amount from the typical $140,000.

Montgomery Field covers 456 acres just east of state Route 163. A fourth project there that would house and service helicopters is in the early planning phases, Rubio told the committee.

At 880-acre Brown Field in Otay, the Metropolitan Airpark project is slated to cover 330 acres when completed over the next several years. Community leaders say it will transform the mostly dormant airport into a boon for business along the international border and in the San Diego region overall.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.

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