The Lawrence airport could grow significantly in the coming years and decades. Fortunately for taxpayers, the new airport manager said a core tenet of airports is that they should pay for themselves.
Shaun Cookson has served as the city’s airport manager since June. He shared information as part of the Lawrence City Commission’s special meeting Tuesday evening.
“That’s something that airports in general do strive to do across the country and reach what we call self-sustainability,” Cookson said. “It’s actually part of the (Federal Aviation Administration) grant assurance processes, too, where they want us to try to be as self-sustaining as possible under the conditions given.”
The airport is almost 100 years old, established in October 1929. Today, it has runways that are 5,700 and 3,700 feet long, eight taxiways, and 64 based aircraft, “which means that those are aircraft that call Lawrence their home,” Cookson said.
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The airport has 30 T-hangars, which store small to midsize aircraft, but there are still 20 or more people on a wait list for spaces, Cookson said.
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“So even though we’re already at 100% capacity with our T-hangars, we have a community that still is not being served by Lawrence that wants to be served by Lawrence,” Cookson said. “So we are trying to do what we can to be intuitive for future development.”
Lawrence’s is currently a C-II airport, meaning it can serve aircraft such as the Challenger 300. It can seat eight to 10 passengers.
The ultimate goal of the airport is to become a C-III airport that can support corporate and charter jets and some air cargo, such as a Boeing 737. It would require a longer runway to accommodate larger aircraft, and there’s also currently nowhere for such a heavy aircraft to park.
The goal is not for the airport to become a big international airport like Kansas City’s, Cookson said. But the proximity and location between Kansas City and Topeka “makes us very lucrative” to a lot of aviation businesses, he said.
The airport has faced some challenges. The city has received nearly $25 million in FAA grants since 1982, and the FAA has alleged the city had some violations of grant assurances in recent years. Cookson described grant assurances as “the strings that are attached to the federal funds that we receive from the FAA.”
Cookson said the FAA identified several things the airport needs to take a closer look at, including rules and regulations, minimum standards, ground transportation policy and lease policy, rates and charges, and an airport capital improvement plan. Those will ultimately be coming back to the city commission, Cookson said.
The city also retained new legal counsel last month to aid in compliance.
“We are making that headway and that progress toward getting back into compliance, and compliance is not the end goal — it’s the foundation for what we’re trying to build next,” Cookson said.
City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry said for the month that he’s been in his position, he’s seen Cookson “move mountains” when it comes to the airport.
Commissioner Kristine Polian brought up a concern from some residents in the area, which is drainage. She said there are significant drainage issues in North Lawrence and was curious if there would be drainage projects included in future work.
Al-Ghafry said there are environmental laws that regulate that as well as design parameters that must be addressed, so any adverse impact of groundwater would also have to be addressed.
“Development that takes place at the airport needs to make sense, and ultimately that’s the whole idea behind all these processes that the FAA has put in place and our grant obligations for development,” Cookson said. “So I think you’re hitting that right on the head to make sure that we are doing the right things for the right reasons.”
The special meeting was for information purposes only. Commissioners asked some questions but were not asked to take any action, and there was no public comment.
The city’s Aviation Advisory Board is set to meet next at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7. Find the board’s meeting agendas at this link.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
