CLEVELAND, Ohio – Look into the future, five or 10 years from now. Are there airplanes taking off from downtown Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport?
The leader of the city’s business community hopes not.
Baiju Shah, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, said he wants the city to work “with urgency” to close the small airport and open the acreage for public access.
“We can make this happen. We must make this happen,” he said.
The city’s future depends on it, he said.
Shah was reacting to the release early this week of two studies, commissioned by Cleveland City Hall, that lay out a path for closing Burke, which occupies a prime piece of lakefront real estate east of Huntington Bank Field, where the Browns play, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The studies take a detailed look at the economic impact of closing the airport, as well as a potential closure’s effect on aviation operations in the region.
Though the studies make no recommendation, they do outline a path for closing the airport, which has seen operations steadily decline over the past 20 years.
Admittedly, that path is complicated, will likely be expensive and could take years, said Bonnie Teeuwen, chief operating officer for the city.
Teeuwen said that no decision has been made about the future of the airport. But the city is proceeding forward with an eye toward closing Burke.
By the end of the year, she said, the city should have a better idea about what steps need to be taken to shutter the facility, which opened in 1947.
She added that Cleveland will work closely with the Federal Aviation Administration to make sure the city follows the proper procedures.
“They have a lot of rules and regulations we need to follow,” she said. “We want to make sure we partner with them every step of the way.”
A spokesman for the FAA noted that Cleveland has not formally submitted a request to close Burke.
“The FAA’s policy is to strengthen the national airports system,” the agency said in a statement. “Should the city wish to pursue closure, they will have to submit a formal proposal justifying their request and demonstrating how the closure will benefit civil aviation. A significant review and analysis of all aspects of the airport’s current and potential future use is taken into consideration, including all Federal obligations of the airport.”
Opposition to Burke’s closure
Certainly, not everyone is in favor of shutting down Burke.
Kim Dell, the executive director of the Cleveland National Air Show, said she would like to see the airport continue to exist – and not just because the airport plays host to the popular Labor Day Weekend event every year.
“It’s not this sleepy quiet airport,” she said. “On Friday, corporate jets are lined up to take off. It’s an asset. I wish the city would recognize it and use it more.”
Robert Snezek, a pilot and the owner of Zone Aviation, a flight school that operates at Burke, also doesn’t want the airport to close – not yet anyway.
There are other lakefront areas in and near downtown, around the Browns stadium, for example, and east of Burke, that could be developed before the 245-acre airport.
“There’s a lot of places to improve before you tear down an airport,” said Snezek, who also operates out of Lorain County Regional Airport in Elyria. “To me, the last option is the airport.”
Closing Burke will also likely be prohibitively expensive – in the tens of millions of dollars — including paying back government grants, buying out leases, environmental remediation and other costs. “I’m never OK with blowing taxpayer money,” he said.
Tim Dixon, chief financial officer of Aitheras Aviation Group, also said he hopes Burke continues to exist in some form.
“We started our company at Lakefront 20 years ago,” he said. “It’s been a terrific location for us.”
The company, with approximately 35 local employees, provides air ambulance flights and transports organs for transplants, among other medical services, for the Cleveland Clinic and other health-care systems.
If the airport does close, the company could possibly operate elsewhere in Northeast Ohio, he said. “It really depends on what space is available, the cost of it and our business needs at the time,” Dixon said.
Despite some business opposition, support from the Greater Cleveland Partnership is significant. The organization operates as the region’s chamber of commerce, with more than 12,000 members.
Shah said improved access to the lakefront is far more important than the modest economic impact that the airport generates.
The city’s future, he said, is tied to making it an attractive, engaging place to live.
“When you create public access to the waterfront, it becomes a magnet for development,” he said. “It becomes a magnet for talent attraction and retention in our region. It’s a catalyst, as we’ve seen on the near West Side. That’s why it’s so important.”
The two city studies don’t go into significant detail about possible development on the property, other than to outline three general scenarios – one with minimal development, including parkland and space for recreation; a second with more intensive development, including 1,200 residential units, retail and a hotel (plus a park); and a third hybrid option, which would keep the airport open and add a hotel.
The cost of future development on the site isn’t addressed, either, in part because of uncertainty about environmental issues at the airport, which is built atop a landfill.
Activity at Burke slows
Activity at Burke has decreased significantly in recent years, at least as defined by takeoffs and landings.
In 2023, there were 37,769 takeoffs and landings at Burke, down from a high of more than 100,000 in 2000, according to FAA data.
The last commercial passenger service at Burke ended in 2021, when Ultimate Air Shuttle, which offered daily flights to Cincinnati, shut down.
A majority of the flights today are a function of the two flight schools that operate at Burke.
Nearly a third of all non-training flights at Burke involve medical transportation.
The biggest user of Burke, aside from the flight schools, is the Cleveland Clinic, according to Shah.
He noted that the new Opportunity Corridor roadway makes it a lot easier to get from the East Side hospital to Cleveland Hopkins.
A spokeswoman for the Clinic said the hospital system had not taken a position on the possible closure of Burke.
According to the studies released this week, many current operations at Burke could be moved to other Northeast Ohio airports, including Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Lorain County Regional in Elyria and others.
To accommodate the additional traffic, however, improvements to those airports would likely be required – and that’s just one of the many “hidden” expenses of shutting down Burke.
Others include buying out leases and reimbursing capital expenses for businesses at Burke – notably to Signature Flight Support, which provides storage, maintenance and fueling services at the airport. The company recently completed a $16.5 million expansion at Burke.
Litigation from airport users is another possible expense – and a big financial variable, according to Teeuwen.
But Teeuwen points out that there’s a cost to keeping Burke open, too.
The airport operates with a deficit every year, which is covered by revenue from Cleveland Hopkins.
Last year’s deficit was $1.2 million, according to the study.
Much of that financial shortage is covered by the airlines that do business at Cleveland Hopkins. “It’s a negative number on our balance sheet,” she said. “The airlines don’t like that.”
Closing Burke
The report cites three primary ways a community can shut down an airport. To close the airport before 2036, the city would likely have to pay back nearly $10 million in federal and state grant money. If the city waits until the grant restrictions expire in 12 years, it could close the airport without federal approval.
A third option involves getting Congress to pass legislation authorizing the closure.
The options aren’t mutually exclusive, according to both Teeuwen and Shah. The city can work with both the FAA and Congress to speed up the process.
“We need to make this a priority of our elected federal leaders,” said Shah. “We need to make it everybody’s priority.”
Teeuwen declined to put a timetable on the effort, though she conceded that Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, who has advocated for the closure of Burke, might not be in office when the closure occurs.
“If you say 10 years, I probably wouldn’t disagree with that because there is a lot of work that needs to be done,” she said.
She added, “A good administration sets up policies that span future administrations. If the decision is to move forward, future administrations will have the data and understand why this is the right decision.”
Shah, meanwhile, said Cleveland doesn’t have 10 years.
The region’s most pressing challenge, he said, is attracting and retaining talent for future economic growth.
“We stand fully ready to assist the city in navigating the next steps to bring broader opportunities to our lakefront,” Shah said.
It will take a few years, he acknowledged. “But we must make this happen in an accelerated fashion.”
©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit cleveland.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
