Aug. 24—BRIDGEPORT — A year after negotiations about the state's airport authority taking over city-owned Sikorsky Memorial Airport fell apart, the sides are again talking about how to grow the aviation facility, including bringing back commercial passenger service.
Retiring Connecticut Airport Authority (CAA) Executive Director Kevin Dillon and Daniel Roach, an aide to Mayor Joe Ganim, in separate interviews this week confirmed discussions are again underway after a possible sale or management deal collapsed in mid-July 2023.
"We're sitting back down with the CAA (and) picking up where it was left off," Roach said.
And Dillon said, "It's certainly accurate for the city to say there's active conversations underway with us about our involvement there."
"I have felt all along there is tremendous potential at that airport," Dillon continued. "Even if that potential doesn't translate into returned passenger service in the near future." He suggested general and corporate aviation could be enhanced at the Stratford-based Sikorsky.
More News
Investigations of Bridgeport absentee ballot scandal 'still ongoing'
Tyesha Toms, the lawyer hired in early February to run Bridgeport's law department,...
The absentee ballot drop box at the Margaret E. Morton Government Center in Bridgeport, Conn. on Sept. 20, 2023.
Officials: Bridgeport church needs help with discarded needles on grounds
Eddy Michel, an assistant pastor at Bridgeport's Shekinah Glory Free Methodist Tabernacle...
Shekinah Glory Free Methodist Tabernacle, 312 Brooks Street in Bridgeport, Conn. July 29, 2024.
New York developer buys landmark downtown Bridgeport theater
Kiumarz Geula, who already owns the former AT&T and Connecticut Post buildings, recently...
Developer Phil Kuchma recently sold the Bijou Theater at 275 Fairfield Avenue to a limited liability company run by Kiumarz Geula, a New York City-based developer, in Bridgeport, Conn. July 24, 2024.
Where does CT official in election fraud case live? Traffic stop renews issue
Bridgeport Councilman Alfredo Castillo faces scrutiny over his residency after an arrest...
Alfredo Castillo, a Bridgeport city councilman, stands in Connecticut Superior Court during a hearing in Bridgeport, Conn. July 10, 2024.
New England Nationals BMX competition returns to Trumbull
Trumbull's BMX track at Indian Ledge Park hosts the New England Nationals for the third...
BMX racers catch some air during the opening day of the USA BMX New England Nationals at Indian Ledge Park in Trumbull, Conn. on Friday, July 26, 2024.
The CAA has six Connecticut airports in its portfolio, including Bradley International in Windsor Locks, where the authority is based.
Meanwhile Roach said the rehabilitation of one of the airport's two-runways — 11/29 — is closer to groundbreaking. That project, funded with the help of $7 million from the state, has been touted as necessary for the facility to continue to function and for the possible return of regular commercial passenger flights. Sikorsky currently serves business, charter and private planes.
"The actual work should be starting soon, before the winter sets in," Roach said. "Hoping to have it done a year from now."
And he is also optimistic about discussions to install landing pads for electrical vertical air-taxis to John F. Kennedy International and other airports in and around New York City.
"That's probably a couple years out, still," Roach said.
Dillon said while the CAA is not involved, "I do think Sikorsky is positioned well geographically to undertake initiatives like that. I think that's a reality."
But the authority and Ganim's administration had hoped to have struck a deal by now for the former to, through purchase or another arrangement, take over running the airport and lure one or more commercial carriers there. The belief has been the CAA has the financial wherewithal and expertise to make Sikorsky similar to the non- CAA-run Tweed New Haven Airport, where small airline Avelo has been offering flights to several destinations, including a just-announced non-stop twice-a-week run to New Orleans starting in November.
And Avelo rival Breeze Airways earlier this month said come December it too will be operating at Tweed, with flights to Florida and, starting in February, Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina.
"It's frustrating," Bridgeport City Council President Aidee Nieves said of watching the progress at Tweed while things at Sikorsky remain status quo.
But Nieves, who because of her elected position also holds a seat on the Bridgeport airport commission that helps oversee Sikorsky, said she was not aware the Ganim administration was again speaking with the CAA and expressed some skepticism that interaction will be productive.
"Talk is cheap," Nieves said. "We went down this road before."
In April 2022 Ganim proposed a new municipal budget balanced with $4 million of what was then-expected to be the CAA's $10 million payment.
But as of March 2023 the CAA opted not to buy Sikorsky because of potentially significant and costly environmental contamination there. Under Connecticut's property transfer program, established in the mid-1980s, either Bridgeport or the CAA, as part of a sale of Sikorsky, must agree "to investigate the parcel and remediate pollution caused by any release of a hazardous waste or hazardous substance" there.
Talks turned to some sort of management arrangement between the city and the authority. Then the CAA board in July 2023 formally suspended negotiations over running Sikorsky, citing the last-minute elimination in the new state budget of an aviation fuel tax that entity relies on to run its airports.
But Dillon this week said conditions for a deal may be improving in the coming months.
"DEEP (the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection) is expected to come out with new regulations as it relates to clean up and the transfer of properties," he explained. "Certainly we're waiting to see what those changes and regulations could potentially mean."
And, he continued, the fuel tax returns in July 2025.
"There is a little bit of a change in terms of what that will yield. It's a little lower (but) we believe it's still enough to make this (a Sikorsky deal) workable," Dillon said. "We've said all along, it's not just sufficient for the CAA to come down and be involved in the operation. We need to invest in the airport, develop the airport, and the available funds for that would come through that fuel tax."
There, however, is a third lingering issue. What will Stratford do?
Historically, tension exists between the neighboring municipalities over the expansion of airport operations, and that continued to be the case during the prior negotiations with the CAA. Stratford Mayor Laura Hoydicks' administration made an unsuccessful counter-offer to purchase the aviation facility, arguing the would would be a more responsible steward than the upstate-based authority.
Also, state lawmakers from Stratford during the 2023 session of the Connecticut General Assembly succeeded in codifying a process giving town officials a say in approving Bridgeport's sale or lease of the site. Bridgeport officials had that countered the proposed management agreement was not a lease.
Hoydick, Stratford's lone representative on Bridgeport's airport commission, said that body has not received any reports about renewed talks between the city and the CAA.
"I'd be interested to know exactly what is being discussed as we have a vested interest in activities at the airport," Hoydick said. "I just wish we as an airport commission would know what's happening. What the trajectory is and where we'd like to go, so it's transparent to the public. Because planes can't be a big secret. They make a lot of noise. They're above your head."
Although still bullish on Sikorsky, Dillon's tenure running the airport authority ends this coming January. But he insisted the effort to do something with Sikorsky Airport will continue under his successor.
"The board is very much aware of the direction that I'm looking to go in this and very supportive of it," Dillon said.
___
(c)2024 the Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, Conn.)
Visit the Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, Conn.) at www.ctpost.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
