Business View Magazine | December 2020

237 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2020 L INCOLN A I RPORT with pictures and photos. It also includes our economic impact study which was done by the Department of Transportation’s Aeronautics division. The study shows how much value LNK brings to our local economy; breaking it down by jobs impacted and visitor dollars – that overall impact is about 1.3 billion dollars a year. Right now, with our commercial aviation hurting so badly, these numbers prove that even though a big part of our business is down, we still have general aviation, our military partners, and our industrial park which are all thriving. Our industrial park is one of the largest in the Midwest and is home to many local businesses who employ thousands of people in our community.” Haring adds, “We are thrilled to have a thriving general aviation community. We have several FBOs on the airfield, as well as a flight school and a smaller refurbishment operation, and they have continued to persevere throughout the Pandemic. Certain facets of their business, like charter flights, have fallen off but other aspects during a pandemic, led to the need to communicate the vision with more clarity. The Airport hired Rachel Barth, Director of Communications & Customer Engagement, who has been working diligently at connecting with the community. “Some of the things we’ve had to pivot with communications include amping up our social media and our website,” says Barth. “We redesigned the Lincoln Airport website, which went live recently and we now have a website which is clean, updated, customer- friendly, and makes it easier to reach us if you need to. We also added a separate site, next. lincolnairport.com ; a microsite that is specific to the terminal project.” The terminal project is a bit of a hot topic, since we plan to levy a property tax to fund the renovation. It will raise property taxes for people in the city of Lincoln. As Barth explains, “We wanted to make sure we had an avenue for people to ask questions and see the renderings. Once the project gets started that microsite will become vital in terms of updating the public