Salem Municipal Airport

SALEMMUNICIPAL AIRPORT land and Eugene. But, we have a functional ter- minal which would really be a turnkey operation should an airline choose to return. All we need to do is stand up a federal security checkpoint and we are ready to go.” The good news is that, even without com- mercial service, the Airport is not suffering. It is fully-owned and operated by the City of Salem, and operates with only four full-time employees and one half-time person. It is nearly at capacity for GA aircraft and is just beginning to develop a waiting list for hangar space. The economics of the last decade and the recovery from the Great Recession meant that growth has been slow, but the demand is picking up. “We have done our hangar development in two ways,” explains Paskell. “Every hangar on this Air- port, today, is privately owned.We have not devel- oped any of the hangars ourselves; we have simply leased the land for hangar development.We do have a corporate hangar area on the south side of our Airport, the newest, large hangar development area. In that case, the City’s Urban Renewal Agency developed some of the infrastructure to allow that space to be development-ready for both corporate hangars and industrial uses. They put in one of the taxi lanes and some of the utility runs, and made it possible for individual building lots to be developed. It would be under a land lease type of agreement for an entity that would want to build its own han- gar or industrial business.” Regarding competition with nearby facilities, Paskell says, “You know, in my early days of airport operations and management, I really didn’t have a sense that airports were in competition with each other. I always thought that if folks needed to fly to Salem, for instance, well then, they flew to the Salem Airport. But what I have found as the years have gone on, and especially here in Oregon and in the Willamette Valley where we are situated, there are a lot of general aviation airports. And to some extent, we are all in competition with each other, whether it be for commercial airline service, or being the airport of choice for corporate air- craft doing business in the Valley. Because of this, we have to be able to set ourselves apart a little bit, and I think we do that with the infrastructure and facilities we have.” “For instance,” he continues, “we have an air traffic control tower, which many of the airports around the Valley do not have. And many corpo- rate flight departments, as well as commercial