" There is no office space, hanger space, or anything available. As for service center, we have one for Cirrus. But we don't want to let anyone know. The bottom line is. You can talk to everyone in the world on coming here but if there is no accomadatioms available they are not going to relocate here. ORH has nothing to offer GA/corporate aircraft or companies."
By the way I have this same comment before many times from other people. Now lets look at the recommendations of the New England Regional Air Study Plan:
- road improvements to cut 10 minutes off the drive from Interstate 290 to the airport would result in a 39 percent increase in passengers, though the report does not call for the construction of a new access road.
- Improvements recommended at the Worcester airport include rehabilitation of aging runway and taxiway pavements and other technology upgrades
- what about the leaks I saw in the terminal roof the day of Allegiant's last flight
The consultants are great telling us what we need, but not telling us how to pay for any of it. How much would it cost to provide better accomodations for GA/corporation aviation, road, runway, taxiway improvements and technology upgrades??? 15-20 million?? How will the City Council be able to provide money for any of these improvements, while we are losing $2,000,000 per year, especially with the City Manager's new 5 year plan???
All of these recommendations lends more credence that we need to sell the airport to someone, who had the deep pockets to implement all of these recommendations. By the way has anyone been over Airport Drive or Goddard Drive lately?
4 comments:
Big Red said "WE" don't want to let anyone know Cirrus has a service center at ORH. Why wouldn't you want to advertise or let it be known that there is a successful business up at the airport. I would think this would be good news to build upon.
After reading this comment it clicked with something I saw in the Worcester Magazine 30th anniversary issue last week. There was a page showing 9 past airport related covers of Worcester Magazine dating back to 1978. They basically said the same thing --problems with the airport.
It looks like this has been going on for 30 years. The comment by Big Red made me think maybe Worcester should leave the airport and it's tenants alone and let them run the airport the way they see fit. Maybe they could turn a profit. I don't think this has been tried before.
try something new:
I keep saying let "MassPort" take over, but if another group like the current tenants want to--fine by me.
Let the strongest bid win.
What's a better deal for City, sell or lease to a private party for nothing and realize 700K annually (at todays valuations and rates) in poperty taxes or sell to Massport for $XX million and realize a small PILOT payment annually?
An outright sale of ORH will rid any problems, I agree. But in the mean time. The city has no money for new facilities. The only way ORH is going to get any better is from private investors. Which there are many. The only way to get private people to invest is to put out RFP's. Nothing can happen without an RFP. So spend the 39 cents for a stamp and put an RFP out and see what happens! The city has nothing to loose. Private investors and incentives will have a big impact on ORH. All this can be done until they sell or lease or whatever. At least they won't be sitting there with their thumbs up their butt.
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