Columbia Metropolitan Airport

and does not receive any state or local tax dollars. In fact, it generates around $847 million for South Carolina. Over 40 businesses operate on the airport’s campus, comprising over 1,871 full time jobs with a direct payroll of nearly $80 million. Mike Gula is CAE’s Executive Director and Frank Murray is the Director of Planning & Facilities. High on their agendas is increasing economic development within the Airport complex. “Right now, our infrastructure is in really good shape,” Gula points out. “We committed a lot of dollars over the last ten years to get things to where they need to be.” Murray agrees: “We’ve gotten caught up with our main facilities,” he states. “We’ve done a lot of renovations of our terminal and gotten the airfield where it needs to be. So, we’re at a point, now, where we can start looking to define some projects over the next five to ten years that would lend themselves to economic development.” “From the property/economic development