Business View Magazine | December 2018

170 171 they can justify offering service.” Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport, which is owned by the City of Klamath Falls, has just six employees, but Barsalou and Tepper point out that its economic impact, in terms of employment, far outstrips that small number. In fact, the Airport generates more than $85 million annually for the regional economy in the Klamath Basin. The Ore- gon Air National Guard is Klamath County’s third largest employer, with more 1,100 Guard mem- bers, contractors, and other workers attached to the base. And there are another, roughly, 80 part- time and full-time, non-National Guard-related people who work at the Airport, as well. However, even with the typical revenues of rentals, landing fees, and fuel-flowage fees, the Airport, itself, is not self-sufficient, and has to rely upon City of Klamath Falls property tax revenue and a share of the City’s portion of the county’s transient room tax revenue to help fund opera- tions. A couple of ways of generating additional revenue are under consideration - one of them centers on hangar space. Barsalou says the Airport didn’t own any han- gars until two years ago. Instead, it leased the land and the hangars, all 58 of them, were owned by individuals. “Throughout the last couple of years, as those tenants have wanted to sell their buildings, there’s a provision in a lot of the leases CRATER LAKE – KLAMATH REGIONAL AIRPORT that allows the Airport the first right of refusal,” he explains. “For the first time, we’ve taken them up on that option to purchase a couple of the hangars. So, we now own two hangars and we have a waiting list of eight people to rent those hangars - rather than purchasing them.” But that waiting list isn’t a strong enough indi- cator of demand to justify the construction and operational costs for new hangar space, says Bar- salou, who is seeking ways to “whittle away” the Airport’s annual $1.2 million operational shortfall. “The problem we often have when we try to ‘pen- cil it out’ is while there is some demand, the cost that people are willing to pay for hangar space is still relatively low,” says Tepper. “As a city entity that has to pay prevailing wages for a project of this sort, it costs us out of building hangars, based on what we can get the local market to bear for the rental of those hangars.We’re constantly trying to figure out a different way to fund those hangar constructions to bring that break-even point down a little closer to what we think would justify the building of that project.” Creating a business park on Airport property is another option under consideration. Sufficient land is readily available and has been set aside. Tepper says, because the Airport plans to lease the land for the business park, rather than sell it, it requires more searching to find “that right kind of tenant” who is interested in that type of arrangement. Regarding the Airport’s capital projects: a new taxiway was recently completed on the Airport’s northeast side, Taxiway Bravo. It connects to a