Tiny airport eyes big future

MOSES LAKE — Members of the Moses Lake Airport Advisory Board are struggling with the future direction of the city’s tiny airport.

“There was a state study done that this airport brings $16 million to the city of Moses Lake,” said Board Member Tim Prickett during a regular meeting of the board on Tuesday. “Just the airport, with the normal stuff (and) people coming in.”

The single-runway airport located at the southwest corner of Road 4 and Road L Northeast sits in the shadow of the much larger Grant County International Airport, host to the annual air show, jumbo jets full of cherries taking off for China, military exercises and a fleet of Boeing 737-MAX airplanes awaiting repair and refit.

But the tiny airport itself is home to several smaller repair shops. It’s also where Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, keeps an office in a hangar full of Republican Party campaign banners from past elections, and it’s where Daryl Jackson, a former Moses Lake city council member, and his son Darrin, a current commissioner overseeing the Port of Moses Lake, have their pilot training and aircraft repair business, Jackson Flight Center.

It’s an important place to do business, Prickett said, and it needs to be preserved. Because development, particularly residential development, can wipe out small airports, he explained.

“What we’re trying to do here is to maintain our airport as an airport,” he said.

Four of the five board members — Prickett, Richard Pearce, Darrin Jackson and Finley Grant — attended, while the fifth board member, Dent, was absent. Also attending the Tuesday meeting were a number of pilots and owners of businesses located at the airport, as well as Moses Lake Mayor Dean Hankins, council members David Eck, Judy Makewell and Deanna Martinez, and Municipal Services Director David Bren.

While the advisory board members have a number of concerns, mostly they are frustrated that they are only an advisory board, and have no real power or responsibility to actually manage the airport. They are also concerned that what money the airport does generate — mostly in the form of leases for hangar space — goes into the general fund for the city and not back into the airport.

“I’d like to see the (city) council fund the airport,” Darrin Jackson said. “And give the advisory board real responsibility to run and maintain airport property like lights, the wind-tee and weed control.”

Early in the meeting Bren made a pitch for a residential and business airpark development that would combine the roughly 60-acre municipal airport with most, but not all, of a 95-acre mainly agricultural plot that currently hosts the city’s Operations Complex. He said the city and the airport board have a “golden opportunity” to set a direction for the airport for the next 50 years at least.

“I really think everyone in this room should not squander this opportunity,” Bren said, adding that the city council wants some guidance about what to do with the airport by its next meeting.

Bren said it would be fairly easy to upgrade the advisory board to a commission, but it would also require the council to pass an ordinance.

The airport board is scheduled to meet April 8, at noon in Building 5-1 of the municipal airport at 11905 Road 4 NE, to vote on a recommendation to the Moses Lake City Council. The city council’s first meeting in April is set for Tuesday, April 12, beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the council chambers at 321 S. Balsam St.

Rod Richeson, an employee of the Port of Moses Lake who also owns the maintenance and repair company Blue Sky Aviation at the municipal airport, said a good first step would be to get some power over the airport back into the hands of actual airport commissioners rather than a less-formal advisory board.

“Let’s just take this baby step and get some of that decision-making back here closer to the actual airport,” Richseon said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.