Officials: Airport would spur growth unseen since coal era   

Thursday, 01 February 2007 

By KENT JACKSON

Standard-Speaker

The Coal Region, where riches once came from underground, now might prosper from the sky, according to plans announced Wednesday to build a freight airport outside Hazleton.

State Rep. Todd Eachus, D-116, Luzerne Commissioner Gregory Skrepenak and a trio of businessmen from Gladstone Partners said the airport has the potential to create jobs and spin-off businesses unlike any enterprise since the coal industry petered out 50 years ago.

“Coal was king, but coal is dead. We all know that,” Eachus said at a news conference in the Humboldt Industrial Park before saying the airport would “allow high-value products to come and be dropped out of the sky.”

On land in Humboldt transferred by Gladstone, the county would own and operate the airport. It could be built for $1.6 billion and paid for by state, county, and private – but not federal – funds, they said.

The Federal Aviation Authority, however, still could block the project, first proposed by Gladstone’s Michael Marsicano in 1998 when he was mayor of Hazleton, by denying airspace approval for the airport.

Eachus said state officials have received encouragement from the FAA, and he believes the airport could help defend the nation against terrorism. State-of-the art equipment would allow for inspection of air freight, a goal of recent congressional action.

“What was a good idea is now a better idea because of 9/11,” Eachus said.

If the FAA approves, construction could be completed in 2½ years or in time to open the airport by 2010.

In the interval, Eachus and Skrepenak said the public will have ample time to comment about noise or other issues they foresee arising from the airport.

The first opportunity is under way already.

People can comment on the Luzerne commissioners’ plan to create an airport authority until a meeting scheduled for March 14 in Hazleton when the vote to form the authority could occur.

The authority would build, own and operate the airport.

“This is the kind of opportunity every elected official dreams about,” Skrepenak said.

Commissioner Todd Vonderheid said the authority could derive operating money from landing fees and fuel sales at the airport.

Early in the planning stages, the airport had been described as a tri-county facility and Vonderheid said Carbon and Schuylkill counties still can play a role.

“Because of the need of applying to the FAA, we felt the need to take the lead. It can be made broader later,” Vonderheid said.

Eachus said applying for federal funds would slow construction of the airport.

The airport would seek state transportation funds, which originate as federal block grants, and also turn to the county and private investors.

Gladstone’s Bob Powell said the airport might attract an array of international investors, just as a proposal to sell the Pennsylvania Turnpike has done.

Powell was Hazleton city solicitor when Marsicano was mayor and suggested building a freight airport. After being flown into Hazleton, freight could move faster on the relatively uncrowded sections of Interstates 80 and 81 than on the highways serving airports in New York City and Newark, N.J., Marsicano believed. Railroad lines in Humboldt could expedite part of the freight from the airport, and developers would ask the state to create an exchange for the airport on Interstate 81.

Powell, Marsicano and Gregory Zappala, who also works for J.P. Morgan and Co., banded together in Gladstone. Powell said they have put more than $1 million in equity and time into the airport and commissioned a study by Lee Fisher and Associates.

Plans that Gladstone showed on Wednesday depict a 13,000-foot runway, long enough to land the world’s largest commercial plane, the Airbus A-380.

A report prepared two years ago by the LPA Group called for a pair of runways 12,000 feet long.

Powell said the county would determine the length and number of runways.

He said Gladstone would transfer approximately 1,000 acres of 4,300 acres it owns in Humboldt to the county for construction of the airport.

Gladstone, meanwhile, would profit by developing businesses on its remaining land, which would become more valuable because of the airport, Powell said.

He pointed out that corporate giants Coca-Cola and Archer Daniels Midland recently agreed to open plants in Humboldt.

“The airport is going to magnify that,” Powell said.

Gladstone estimates the airport would directly employ 4,500 workers as cargo handlers, customs services, commodity handlers, security personnel and bonded warehouse workers.

“Jobs you could raise a family with,” Skrepenak said.

The airport could trigger a growth of new residences, increase the property tax base and even foreign investors for indirect impacts that Gladstone estimated at $17.1 billion.

Indirectly, 160,000 jobs might spin off from the airport as manufacturers, freight handlers and high-tech companies open around it, Gladstone said, using the commercial airport in Memphis, Tenn., as an example.

In Memphis, a distribution center for home entertainment products, a laptop computer repair center, drug testing laboratory and an eye bank for corneal transplants were among the largest companies to open near the airport.