It employs 360 people, and makes $45M in annual revenues. And it serves a corporate executive jet audience that the city's Insurance industry titans overtly say makes keeping corporate HQ in town more convenient...where the loss of the airport literally down the street from HQ would make them more open to exploring relocation. I very much doubt with how much undeveloped/underdeveloped land is still in the City that they are capable of coming up with anything better/grander than current use. Or that they won't wilt yet again when the Insurance CEO's tell them that Brainard's proximity makes the City 'stickier' for keeping HQ. This is a repeat of every study done 10 years, 20 years, 30 years....60 years ago. Not a single original idea to be had in that City Hall, Bronin merely the latest to fall for the shiny-ball syndrome of doing a study. The fact that the airport's actual owner, the Connecticut Redevelopment Authority, doesn't ever say boo about the...uhhh...."redev" potential is because they know it fills out its balance sheet quite nicely and trusting the locals with execution on something better is a fool's errand. It's always a Mayor's Office shiny-ball syndrome thing pushing to tear it up, not the people with an actual economic understanding of the site usage.
Another study would, without question, simply reaffirm the results of the
last one and say: "Maximize its AIRPORT value, damnit, and stop falling prey to lazy distractions!!!" As is, this seems to be driven by NIMBY trojan horse of mostly Wethersfield residents bitching about another round of routine tree-trimming on the landing approach. You really think they're going to allow honest-to-god
density to sprout up instead when that's their boredom tactic now on current land usage??? Jeez...this was a tiresome kick-the-can topic back when I was growing up there 25 years ago. Back then it was Mayor Mike and the circular firing squad on that Council amplifying the NIMBY gripes. The names change; the short-attention span theatre never does.
Maybe they would've had a leg to stand on if Brainard was the city airport that went, and much bigger-capacity Rentschler across the river were the keep. But they already squandered that one for
"FOOT-BALL!!!! UNGH-UNGH!!!!" and chasing the spectacular corruption of NCAA Div I. But that ship sailed, and the better of the two airstrips is now half-assing it in sprawlsville. I fully expect Bronin to claim he's got a mystery NHL team gunning to relocate and that would be the perfect place to put a public-funded arena for the Nü-Whalers, since they probably can't perceive reality outside of a self-imposed Rentschler + DD Park box.
www.facebook.com
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/IJBKMWGCVNGDLDGZUVPSEFASUQ.jpg)
www.courant.com
