The Albany Airport as it looked one day in the summer of 2018. In the background, the Linn County Fair & Expo Center.
Every 25 years or so, someone in the Albany city government thinks it would be a good idea to get rid of the municipal airport and use the land for something else. And now that time may have come again.
In 1973, the council talked about selling the airport, then about 150 acres, to one of two or three developers interested in building a regional shopping mall there. Mayor Platt Davis envisioned using the proceeds to pay for building a civic center downtown.
The notion fizzled when it was discovered that, because of the use of federal funds at the airport, a contract with the U.S. government required the city to keep the airport until at least 1981.
It wasn’t until 24 years later, over the spring and summer of 1997, that a new crop of council members again talked about the future of the airport, wondering whether general aviation was the highest and best use of the land. In October that year, Mayor Chuck McLaran and four of the six councilors came out in favor of keeping the airport for at least 20 years.
Another generation went by.
Then, this month (on Saturday, Jan. 15) the council, staff members and a consultant held an online goal-setting meeting which, including breaks, lasted more than six hours. You can watch and listen to it here. If you last long enough you will, at 6:07:29, hear Mayor Alex Johnson II bring up the airport.
He says he expects some blowback, but: “I think we need to revisit the airport. It’s not a money maker for the city. It’s valuable land that we could put housing on.”
He called it a “hobby airport” and said it is used by only about 200 people, and he believes its future use has to be discussed as part of any long-range city planning.
In view of what he called Albany’s housing shortage, he asked, “Do we really need an airport for the pleasure of 200-plus people?”
Whether the mayor’s suggestion leads anywhere is hard to predict. The goal-setting ended a few minutes later without any others on the council taking it up. (hh)
One important fact not mentioned in this article: on June 3, 1998, the Albany Municipal Airport was declared a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. The district’s official name is the Albany Municipal Airport Historic District. Doing anything else with the airport property would be an uphill battle at best. I hope the mayor will consider carefully whether that’s the fight he wants to pick.
The very fact that the Albany airport is listed in the National Register of Historic Places ought to tell you something about just how empty that particular designation has become. By any definition, every place, every locale, every hovel and every back-alley should be on this same Register. After all, history has taken place everywhere.
As to the airport servicing a narrow, elite crowd! Of course it does. By definition aircraft ownership is largely confined to the military and those with ample cash. So, the nation’s taxpayers are coerced into paying for a service that largely coddles the few with enough money to afford aviation fuel…a smallish group, but influential well beyond their numbers. Like the many who complain daily in this space about how Albany taxpayers are forced to subsidize CARA, or “affordable housing,” or the care and feeding of the Great Unwashed, perhaps they ought turn their attention towards the 200 Privileged Few who receive this marvelous subsidy….a paved parking lot for the rich and their Cessnas.
You might check on the rules regarding the Airport being in the National Register of Historic Places. And they have received Federal Funds several times recently that I believe would have to be repaid if they tried to sell it.
Absolutely not! We have too much new housing currently in the works. The council has some “Let’s look like Portland” mentality that will only make us MORE like Portland (i.e. crime, gangs, drugs, homeless, graffiti and general filth). Enough is enough. Start cleaning up and fixing our existing problems instead of trying to create more!
To “StopTheGrowth” while I agree “Absolutely Not” because the Airport is already a functional part of our community, I strongly disagree that we have too much new housing in the works. We have an acute housing shortage that needs to be addressed by expanding our housing options. Hiding behind a pseudonym is also a cowardice way to comment and show your “Not In My Backyard” NIMBY sentiment without sharing where your backyard might sit. For all we know you could be a investor in real-estate investment trusts that benefit from the ever growing cost of housing as you push to limit supply.
No we should not consider redeveloping the airport, but YES we should consider every opportunity to expand new housing opportunity in Albany and beyond.
At what point do you suggest we stop building? When there is no more open space? You should move to So. Cal. and see what it’s like with no open space and people living on top of each other.
You “bleeding hearts” need to think about how others feel about this overbuilding.
According to the 343-page 2016 Albany Airport Master Plan, the city purchased the original airport property from Lena Sternberg for $14,000 in 1929.
Since then this property has been buried in government bureaucracy.
Back in the 1980’s Linn County explored closing the local airports in Lebanon and Albany. The idea was to build a new, regional airport. No local support, so the idea crashed and burned.
Albany’s airport is important enough that the feds listed it in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems. It receives federal funds. The feds would want some of that money back.
Add in the fact that the airport is subject to the rules of the bureaucrats at the Oregon Department of Aviation and the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office.
To close and redevelop the airport would involve many, many bureaucratic fingers and regulatory coercion.
And nothing works quickly with the government.
So if Albany is serious about the Mayor’s idea, plan on about 50 more years before anything tangible happens.
The Airport could generate more interest and income by enticing the fly-in clubs and groups to fly in and visit Albany and Linn County – Hello Albany Visitors Assoc! The Independence Airport has had fly-ins for years. Long term, the Muni Airports could coordinate and provide tourism fly-ins in the area.
Agree with STG…
Fix what is currently in need of fixing.
Like it or not, Municipal Airports are a necessary part of our infrastructure and emergency preparedness. While the aviation hobbyists may be the primary use I have picked up business clients who have flown into the airport to do business in Albany, and if we have an emergency the airport may play a critical role. It has been recently used for staging fire equipment during wildfire fighting, and god forbid we have the Cascadia “Big One” quake we could need airports for emergency supply runs if major infrastructure is damaged. It is foolish to think a city the size of Albany does not need an airport. Plenty of city services are not money makers, airports are one of many necessary infrastructure and transportation links we should never take for granted.
Recently the tornados that hit Kentuckians blocked roads and municipal airports served as medical evac routes, supply drops, and much needed destinations for rescue workers.
I trust future meetings will bring some common sense to this conversation.
Leave the Airport alone Quit trying to destroy our city. We don’t need more housing,
You need to start fixing Streets and such here.
Keep Albany Friendly,
Here,here.
If anything bad like a earthquake ever happens you would all want an airport to fly things in. Selling seems very shortsighted to me and usually means counselors have relatives that wish to develop the available land. Politics at its worst.
We don’t own a cabin or a boat or a motorcycle. We don’t own a trailer or an F-150 pickup. We own an airplane that is valued at less than many, many cars on the road. I don’t know what you’re smokin’ that you think pilots are rich. We have a constant hole in our pocket and what we have falls out in whatever neighborhood we land in since we like to fly to Albany Airport to eat at the Cascade Grill or the Chinese Restauant or the Denny’s, and have borrowed the airport car to go to the bowling alley and putt-putt golf in Albany. Though marijuana is legal in Oregon NONE of the Pilot community smokes it as it is Federally forbidden. We do not cause DUI accidents. Flying down there instead of driving down there from Hillsboro keeps us off the roads to drive there. We stay in hotels for stopovers on long trips, visit tourist sites, shop for clothes, and contribute to the economy. We are some of the cleanest and most positive-impact travelers you will have stopping in your fair city. We post photos and tell our friends how nice it was in Albany, and because our community is far reaching, more Pilot folk come to visit and drop money from their pockets, like those commuting from Seattle to California. I hope residents realize many students learn to fly there at the local flight school so the residents can go to PDX and hire the former Cessna flyer at Albany to take them to Hawaii on a big ole jet airliner so they don’t have to take a boat or swim to get there. There are a few reasons, such as Life Flight, that also might make locals value their local municipal airport. Or Angel Flights Northwest, which is volunteer private pilots with their own planes that take patients, a lot of times kids, cancer patients, and those waiting for transplants, to needed medical treatments and doctor visits in other cities. Pilots and Paws is a volunteer group of general aviation pilots flying pets to be adopted or evacuating them from flood or fire ravaged areas to places that will board them such as locations in Albany. There is much unseen by the public at little airports which are connectors and life blood of communities that goes way beyond some “rich person’s hobby.” Most of the pilots I know live modestly SO THAT they can afford having an airplane, or amass debt in order to keep flying when repairs are needed, and many flight students take out student loans to learn to fly for the airlines, amassing the same kind of debt as students going for a 4 year degree. I have barely scratched the surface here. I think we need to start teaching about the infrastructure of aviation in school so people have a better understanding of the system involved.
Very well said, V Nelson. Thank you!
I keep an aircraft (one I built myself) in a rented hangar at the airport. I live on social security. Most of the people here would not be classified as having “ample cash” — not as poor as those tenting on the streets of course, but in the same class as all those big pickup truck owners filing our streets. Many city facilities, such as the playing fields across the street to the east, are not economically viable on their own but provide opportunities that are valuable and are worth supporting. The Albany airport has been a part of my life since the late 1950s and I would hate to see it go. In a perfect world it would be moved — think east of the tracks in Millersburg or east of 7 mile lane — then let the developers have it (outlet mall better use than housing — it is noisy here up next to the freeway). In the mean time, this is the best we have and we will fight for it. Once it is gone, it is gone forever.
Much like ANY open space. “If it’s empty, build on it”. Seems to be the current mindset.
One of the problems I see is that the city always wants to build “new” on open land while letting older areas decay. Seems like it would be better to fix-up or replace the old rundown. Maybe spend some money fixing the infrastructure.
There are at least 4 general aviation airports within a 30 minute drive from Albany.
So the argument that Albany’s airport is critical infrastructure is exaggerated. There is nothing unique about Albany’s airport that can’t be provided at airports in Corvallis, Eugene, Salem, Independence, and Lebanon.
Does anyone remember the Springfield Airport? In the 90’s the land was sold. Now there is virtually no trace that the airport existed. Taxpaying commercial development filled the void.
The Mayor may have a good argument. Good luck navigating shark invested bureaucratic waters, however.
What’s next? Ball fields? Parks? Filling in Waverly and Timber Linn lakes?
V and Bill
Fully aligned with your comments.
The general aviation folks I’ve been around were folks who enjoyed a relaxing “drive” in the air instead of on asphalt. Working stiffs like me. Sometimes there were multiple owners of the plane.
I was only worried about a schoolteacher who decided to fly inverted. Bad choice
Ya gotta love it. The Mayor makes a suggestion during a 6+ hour meeting and all of a sudden it’s the Apocalypse upon us. And he wouldn’t even get a vote if initially it came up for a vote. Amazing…