Business View Magazine | May 2019

121 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MAY 2019 flight instruction, for the first time in nine years. We purchased a Cessna-172; we upgraded the avionics and that brings new faces into the Airport. Learning to fly is the lifeblood of a small airport; without it, our Airport didn’t have much of a future, in my opinion. We’re here for the community and we want to provide the services, and with the economy getting better, we can do that again.” Another potential project would be the expansion of the Airport’s business tenants to include non- aviation enterprises. “There are no non-aviation related businesses based on the field, but we’ve had a lot of interest,” Tattrie remarks. “The Allen County Economic Development has been getting inquiries. We have 500 acres of farmland surrounding the property; we have city water, sewer, high speed internet, and fire hydrants, so we would love to develop a business district with direct runway and taxiway access. So, that would be the grand future plan for the Airport – to provide those services. The County would lease the land to anyone who wanted to build out here.” with General Dynamics on that; they donated $5,000 in funding to help acquire equipment and pay for the permits. And, we’re working with local, state, and federal agencies to install an RCO, which is a Remote Communications Outlet, to have proper two-way communication from the ground all the way up to 3,000 feet and higher; right now we’re lacking that.” Tattrie reports that there are about 35 GA aircraft based at the Airport, mostly single-engine, piston planes. “Our 40 T-hangars were at full capacity at one time, but around 13 years ago, we had an 85-mile per hour microburst windstorm come through; it knocked down C and D Row and that pulled about 14 aircraft. Those guys were older and almost done flying, so they took their insurance money and ran. A and B rows are still very old, but with proper maintenance and care, they will last a while longer. So, we’ve only been at three quarters capacity since that windstorm. But we’ve had some new hangar tenants move in lately – the economy is improving and I’m starting to get more and more calls. We’ve also just added THE ALLEN COUNTY A I RPORT