Should Burke Lakefront be closed?

That is a horrible article. Way too reminiscent of Meigs and that crook of a mayor...
 
RudyP said:
That is a horrible article. Way too reminiscent of Meigs and that crook of a mayor...
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It asks a lot of "questions" that it never answers and are obviously slanted to the authors prejudiced opinion. A bit of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" going on there.
 
A terribly slanted article. But when you put an airport on the waterfront of a city you have to expect that at some point there will be people wanting to develop the land the airport sits on.
 
Gerhardt said:
A terribly slanted article. But when you put an airport on the waterfront of a city you have to expect that at some point there will be people wanting to develop the land the airport sits on.
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My favorite part is where he says there aren't enough people in Cleveland anymore to warrant 3 airports, but he wants to knock it down to build housing. Say what?
 
Every village has it's idiot.
 
Burke has a lot of issues that does not make it small piston friendly. For most operations you are better off landing south of Cleveland and driving in.
 
How many people Cleveland has isn't that relevant for whether they 'need' Burke. How many businesses value the airport is the question that ultimately decides whether there is a need for the airport.

Maybe they need a hiking path or something.
 
Dean V said:
Burke has a lot of issues that does not make it small piston friendly. For most operations you are better off landing south of Cleveland and driving in.
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How so? I've only been there 2-3 times and it has been a while but it always seemed perfectly friendly to me.
 
No. There is exactly one airport on earth that should be closed - KLGA, and that is because of the airspace nightmare is causes.
 
RudyP said:
How so? I've only been there 2-3 times and it has been a while but it always seemed perfectly friendly to me.
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Signature is the only FBO and $7 a gallon gas is the result. Add in their "handling fees" and you have a very wallet unfriendly place. Don't care how many cookies they hand out or how friendly their CS reps are. ;)

Cheers,
Brian
 
They were trying to close Burke 40+ years ago. Must be the current generations attempt. Once the Flats got revitalized things picked up around the whole downtown area to include Burke. Don't know the figures today but 10-12 years ago Burke was one of the busiest airports in Ohio. Will see how this attempt works out.
 
Dean V said:
Burke has a lot of issues that does not make it small piston friendly. For most operations you are better off landing south of Cleveland and driving in.
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I am curious why you say that. I have thought about flying in there.
 
Dude went there to observe for two hours and said it was drizzling and not a single plane came in. Gee, maybe it was Low IFR?
 
PPC1052 said:
I am curious why you say that. I have thought about flying in there.
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The controllers are great there.

You don’t need to go to the private FBO (east, Signature I believe), you can park at the city side (west, under the tower if I remember).

I prefer it over County and will land at Burke even though it’s a farther drive to my destination (30 min vs 15 min).
 
Burke.JPG
Gerhardt said:
A terribly slanted article. But when you put an airport on the waterfront of a city you have to expect that at some point there will be people wanting to develop the land the airport sits on.
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Every few years someone comes up with a grandiose plan to develop that area. There are plenty of vacant buildings along that shore line that could be developed both east and west of BKL. Let them prove it on a smaller scale. For 10 years there was not even a decent restaurant within walking distance airport - the people are not down there to support the development. There are lots of vacant buildings around there including in the flats that could be developed.
 
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Dean V said:
Burke has a lot of issues that does not make it small piston friendly. For most operations you are better off landing south of Cleveland and driving in.
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Unless you want to walk to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next door.
 
Jim_CAK said:
There are plenty of vacant buildings along that shore line that could be developed
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My dad used to work in the Erie View Plaza building where we would watch the Burke air shows. He had once said every time a "connected" council member was elected the issue of developing Burke into a high-end lake view residential complex came to the front. The main reason is it's behind the breakwater, i.e., it won't erode like the rest of the high-dollar properties along Lake Road/Lake Shore Blvd. And with the Lake at record levels this year that erosion will probably kick into high gear.
 
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Dean V said:
Burke has a lot of issues that does not make it small piston friendly. For most operations you are better off landing south of Cleveland and driving in.
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Yep...

I worked in the Cleveland area for over three years about a decade ago (built about a dozen O'Reilly stores w/i an hour or so radius). I flew into Burke a few times just to say I did but I definitely didn't base there. I hangared at Elyria for about the first six months and then Medina for about 3 years. Both a fraction of the cost that Burke would'a been.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Dude went there to observe for two hours and said it was drizzling and not a single plane came in. Gee, maybe it was Low IFR?
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That was part of my takeaway, too. I spent two hours in freezing rain at the skate park and didn’t see a single person on a skateboard. Obviously, nobody uses the skate park. I stayed in a hotel at Aspen for the whole month of August and saw nobody carving the slopes. Obviously, nobody skis at Aspen. Etc.

The other takeaway is that there must be some appeal to drag racing that I don’t get. The comments on this article included the suggestion that the city’s economic problems would all be solved by closing the airport and using it for drag racing. The same suggestion has been floated in my area for uses of KISN once the replacement airport is built (since the original plan of selling the old airport to a developer to pay for the new airport was undermined by the pace of development slowing from “utterly moronic” to “just a little crazy” since the plan was adopted). Once we turn the airport that’s surrounded by housing into a drag racing track, Williston will be the best place in the world! There are enough people that think this way to make me doubt my own sanity.

General takeaway: There is a lot of Underpants Gnome economics at work in the world.

Phase 1: Close airport
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
 
Gerhardt said:
A terribly slanted article. But when you put an airport on the waterfront of a city you have to expect that at some point there will be people wanting to develop the land the airport sits on.
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So far that's not the case.

I doubt there is a developer that would commit tens of millions of dollars to build anything on the Burke property. There are dozens of vacant buildings in the central business district just a few miles away. So far the common method of converting downtown office space to a mixed use development has bypassed the city.

One developer is planning to build two 24 story buildings as a mixed use property. Its original scope has been reduced and a start date has come and gone a couple of times. I think the guy is whistling past the graveyard.
 
Jim_CAK said:
View attachment 74243 Every few years someone comes up with a grandiose plan to develop that area. There are plenty of vacant buildings along that shore line that could be developed both east and west of BKL. Let them prove it on a smaller scale. For 10 years there was not even a decent restaurant within walking distance airport - the people are not down there to support the development. There are lots of vacant buildings around there including in the flats that could be developed.
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The traffic congestion looks horrible. ;)
 
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