Consultants to present options for Steamboat Airport expansion
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
On the agenda
City Council meets today at 4 p.m. at Centennial Hall.
4 p.m. City Council convenes as the Steamboat Springs Redevelopment Authority to discuss construction at Ski Time Square and the base of Steamboat Ski Area, including a draft five-year plan and update on installation of the Burgess Creek Culvert.
5 p.m. City Council meets in executive, or secret, session to discuss a possible acquisition of real estate.
5:30 p.m. Reports from council members, city staff and Routt County Planning Commission; update on studies regarding future plans for Steamboat Springs Airport; proposal for Howelsen Emerald Park Feasibility Study; pre-application for Jobe Property, a 12-acre parcel east of Casey's Pond on Walton Creek Road.
Steamboat Springs — Consultants will tell city officials tonight that a $10 million runway expansion at Steamboat Springs Airport would boost fuel sales and turn a $2 million profit in 20 years.
Dennis Corsi and Justin Pietz, of Armstrong Consultants, an airport engineering and planning services firm based in Grand Junction, will update the Steamboat Springs City Council on Armstrong's study of development options for the airport on Routt County Road 129. The city hired Armstrong in September 2006 to conduct the study, designed to update the airport's master plan.
A second study, conducted by Matrix Design Group of Denver, is exploring alternative uses for the 255-acre airport site, which has sparked public debate for years about land use and the airport's value to the community. The Steamboat Springs Airport Steering Committee is overseeing both studies. Tonight's City Council meeting begins with an executive, or secret, session at 5 p.m. in Centennial Hall on 10th Street.
The Armstrong study says expanding the airport's 4,452-foot runway would allow for more air traffic and increased fuel sales with relatively small local development costs. The Federal Aviation Administration could fund 95 percent of the runway expansion, with state grants funding an additional 2.5 percent, according to the study. That means a $10 million, 600-foot runway expansion would cost slightly more than $250,000 locally. A 1,300-foot expansion costing more than $19 million would require nearly $484,000 in local costs. Either expansion would increase airport revenues and turn a profit in 20 years, Armstrong says.
Tonight's presentation also will include options for expansions to the airport's hangar and taxiway.
George Krawzoff, the city's director of transportation, said the options will be presented for information only and should not be considered for action without results from the Matrix study.
"Whether any of the expansion options they're proposing will be acceptable to the community, I can't speculate, but they would be premature at this point before the alternative study," Krawzoff said. "I remain convinced that the two studies need to come together at the tail end - the city needs to answer the root question of what we're going to do with this airport before they can answer any of the development options Armstrong is proposing."
Krawzoff said both studies are "anticipated to wrap up" in February of 2008.
Additional information on the master plan study is available online at www.armstrongconsultants.com.
Tonight's council meeting also includes a review of the pre-application for a mixed-use development on 12 acres east of Casey's Pond near Walton Creek Road.
Comments
Matthew Stoddard 5 years, 9 months ago
So...spending $10 million on an airport runway now will get us $2 million in profit in 20 years??? Wow. What a deal. I'd be more impressed if the numbers were reversed.
stillinsteamboat 5 years, 9 months ago
What would the impact be on Deer Mtn. Estates residents?
housepoor 5 years, 9 months ago
Did the consultants take into account the 2500 housing units that are slated for the area???? You would think Steamboat 700 would have something to say about that. $2 million in fuel sales.....does that mean the City would ownrun the fueling operations at the airport........Is the purpose of the runway expansion to compete with YVRA for private jet business?
id04sp 5 years, 9 months ago
A 5,800 foot more-or-less runway at 6700 feet MSL won't do anything except bring more and noisier corporate aircraft to Steamboat.
The runway at YVRA is 10,000 feet already, and a bit lower in altitude, but with much more room and much lower noise impact.
Wanna see Steamboat on the news all the time? Remember the "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska? We'd have the "Most Expensive Too-Short Runway in the United States."
Any airplane that needs an extra 1,300 feet of runway already has it, for free, just 20 miles away. 20 miles is 20 minutes in Routt County. Other towns would kill to have that convenience.
When are people going to realize that paying consultants is the most revenue-producing idea the local governments have ever had? Of course, the revenue all goes to the consultants.
What's the key here? The people enjoying the limited benefit of a longer runway will not be living near the airport and dealing with increased noise and more flights anyway. It's a case of the ultra-rich not caring what the merely affluent have to put up with when it comes to aircraft noise.
ventrygirl 5 years, 9 months ago
Is this just another city project funded by tax dollars for the elite Steamboat pilots? Get real!
elphaba 5 years, 9 months ago
Ask the people in Hayden who live under the runway - I believe Bill that you are really saying you (rich) don't care what the average or merely sort of affluent need or want.
another_local 5 years, 9 months ago
Enough already on the Steamboat airport. Leave it the way it is. Don't spend more money on a longer runway. Those jets can go to the other airport.
Thankfully Smartwool pulled our chesnuts out of the fire on the last "investment" in this money pit. Let's not go backwards!
Matthew Stoddard 5 years, 9 months ago
I would liken the Bob Adams STOLport runway extension to "Gotta spend money to make money," but that usually means to try making more money than you put into it.
bubba 5 years, 9 months ago
Incidentally, if you invest 10m in treasuries, you can get a 2m dollar profit in a lot less than 20 years.
another_local 5 years, 9 months ago
You are right about voting out Dellinger. I will be voting Democarat this time around too. Wrong on the rest.
id04sp 5 years, 9 months ago
Knowitall,
Believe it or not, I HAVE flown out of Bob Adams back before the DASH 8s went away. It was very convenient. It probably took me ten minutes less to get home than it would have if I'd flown into Hayden.
It takes a petty expensive airplane to operate safely out of Steamboat. Turbo charging is a MUST, even for "private" airplanes. These airplanes cost what houses sell for in sane parts of the country. Anybody with enough money to pay $5.00 per gallon for fuel and the airplane to burn it should not be challenged by getting a taxi from Hayden to Steamboat as a last resort.
As for the people living under the runway in Hayden, having a longer runway in Steamboat would make very little difference for the airplanes that make most of the noise over there. Steamboat would not take away the truly noisy traffic from Hayden. A longer runway would only increase the noise around Bob Adams field.
The runway cannot be extended toward town. Going the other way, the volume of material required to build up the ground to reach the height of the existing runway would be enormous. We're talking thousands of truck loads; just what Elk River Road and Lincoln Avenue need, right?
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