Greeley-Weld County Airport

GREELEY-WELD COUNTY A I RPORT especially in the winter. Our three maintenance personnel are incredibly busy with snow removal, so we help them out. I get in one of the large plows, the ops guy gets into a plow, and our business manager gets in a plow. We aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty out here – it makes for an interesting time and it gets things done.” The county and the city both want to keep the area “light industrial” and the airport itself tries to focus on aeronautical enterprise, which allows for manufacturing and other corporate businesses to be located nearby to a crucial transportation hub. While the county and city are great partners and assets to the airport, the airport is a great asset to the county and city in being able to attract new business to the area with a promise of a great airport nearby. The airport works to maintain its low lease rates and not overburden aeronautical users by finding other revenue streams to complete capital projects. They have been creative in working with energy resource companies to bring in extra revenue. Anderson recalls, “Back in 2010/11 there was a big oil and gas boom out here and the airport retained all the mineral rights on the property. We leased out the rights to a few of the companies, and at the height of the boom we were bringing in $1,000,000 in revenue for royalties. Over the past few years, we’ve averaged $100-200,000 thousand in royalties going to our capital account. Royalties slowed down so we got creative with how we can start bringing in that kind of money for capital projects again. We’ve started to grant easements for pipeline companies as another revenue stream. With our large property, the pipeline companies only have to deal with one entity, and can utilize areas of the airport where a pipeline will not interfere with current or future aeronautical operations. “ Three years ago, the airport leased 13 acres to Green Leaf Energy in an area that wasn’t feasible Courtesy of Shahn Sederberg