It's a bird!
It's a plane!
And another plane ... and another ...
With a booming business, the East Cooper Regional Airport in Mount Pleasant has plans for its first major facility upgrade in more than two decades.
The airport is slated for a new FBO, or fixed-base operation.
"It's critical," said Pat Waters, a vice president at the Charleston County Aviation Authority and a member of the East Cooper Pilot's Association. "We're the gateway to East Cooper. And the people who come here for economic reasons as well as tourists, this is where they fly into."
The new 2,400-square-foot facility will have a lobby area, a business center with a conference area, a passenger waiting area and offices for the airport managers. It also will feature a pilots' lounge and more room for flight training.
Architects and engineers are designing the building now and hope to complete the plans and permitting process this summer. Groundbreaking is tentatively scheduled for this fall.
The new facility would also make sense to promote the local businesses, Waters said.
"We're just prime for economic development, and that's why we want to do the airport: to make it have a better impact on those who come in. We have the Volkswagen company that visits here, we have Lowe's retired board of directors flies in here.
"We have a lot of executives come in and out of here. We feel a nice facility would show what we truly have here."
Waters said it was important to note that although the Aviation Authority's Board is government-appointed, it doesn't use any local tax dollars; instead, it's run like a business.
And business is booming.
There are now 28 people on the waiting list for a hangar at the facility. Only two have given up their spot in the past two years, said Jim Chase, manager at East Cooper Regional.
He said he would like to see more hangars, but no plans have been finalized.
The airport started a flight school five years ago, and a helicopter charter service a little over a year ago.
Chase estimated that during peak times there are more than 100 take-offs and landings per day.
He attributed the growth to an increase in Mount Pleasant's population and the rising popularity of General Aviation.
Copyright 2005 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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