A NEW AIRPORT FOR THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE

Bay County Int’l Airport

Joe Alba
Ted Clem the Executive Director of Bay County Economic Development Alliance stood in front of
the room during the media briefing about a new airport and his first words were insightful; “we had
an opportunity to design a new airport from scratch, to draw it on a blank piece of paper”. And
with that mandate, the development team sought to design and build a model facility. It is a
unique opportunity. The design plan includes plenty of space for the facilities including runways,
terminals, cargo areas, commercial and industrial sites, hotels and residential homes. And more
impressively, the airport will satisfy the requirements of neighborhood committees, city planners
and environmentalists. The airport is only part of the impressive development that is going on in
Florida’s north-west corridor. This part of Florida which runs along the coastline below Georgia
and Alabama is sometimes called the Panhandle, sometimes called the Emerald Coast, but
always a home to many military installations as Pensacola Naval Air Station, Eglin and Tindall Air
Force Bases. The once sleepy area of over 25,000 square miles is growing very fast and
becoming more and more popular. One factor in the regions growth is the effective marketing and
promotion of the region. Enterprise Florida and Florida’s Great Northwest were the hosts of the
media tour and they treat Florida as if it was there own; and this is evident in their enthusiasm.
The cost of homes and property is escalating and new businesses are streaming in. They are
attracted by the availability of skilled workers, tax relief and quality of life benefits. Ken Willette,
the Director of Business Development for Florida Great Northwest, Inc. told me that they estimate
more than 1,000 new citizens a day arrive in Florida. With tax happy politicos in the New York,
New Jersey region, it would not surprise me if many of the new migrants are coming from our
neck of the woods. The Bay County airport will be developed in an entirely new locale, about five
miles from the old airport and across what the Panama City residents call “West Bay”. It will be
sited on 4,000 acres – about the size of Dulles Airport - which were donated by the St. Joe
Corporation; one of the most important development and real estate firms in Florida. Why would a
real estate corporation contribute land for a new airport? I think it is partly because they want to
see Florida grow and prosper as good corporate citizens, but also because it is in their self-
interest. Transportation and infrastructure development attracts people, raises real estate values
which in turn bring in businesses. Panama City is a centrally sited on the coast of the Panhandle
with Pensacola an hour and a half drive to the West and Tallahassee a two hour drive to the east.
While these towns are not large in comparison to big U.S. Cities nor not even large compared to
Miami or Orlando, they are growing very fast and the entire area will soon have a population of
1,500,000. Because of the proximity to the military bases - which have a large component of
experimental and research installations - there is an interesting mix of professional and military
personnel that make locating a technology business a good way to draw skilled and motivated
employees. We made a visit to a firm called Crestview which is a company dedicated to repair
and modification of fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, serving the needs of the U.S. Air Force and
private firms alike. The company began in 1990 with three employees in a large hangar and now,
the firm employs over 1,200 and will continue to grow in the future. There are many other firms
like Crestview that serve as hi-technology businesses in this newly emerging technical strip. It
has a ways to go before it can be compared to Silicon Valley or the Boston Hi Tech Zone, but
given time, it can be an important area for research, especially in the support of military
installations and civil transport. And now the airport; what would airports like LaGuardia, JFK and
O’Hare give to have this much room to expand? Think about the excruciating work the O’Hare
Airport Agency had to do just to get one runway expanded. Bay County Airport has a mission to
be the “model” airport for passenger and freight usage, for security, transportation to and from,
environmental and noise pollution abatement and for passenger friendly airport amenities. In
2004, 400,000 people used the existing facility. Traffic is expected to grow to 600,000 in 10 years.
To me, the estimates sounded overly conservative but even at that, you are talking about a 7%
average growth rate in expected traffic. I spent some time inside the “old” airport and it was nicely
designed, efficient and clean looking, but unfortunately, the airport has a major design flaw; it is in
a flood zone and even more importantly, cannot expand the runways. Although the FAA gave the
airport authority several years to fix the runway and buffer area length, the airport authority would
have to buy a very large number of homes and businesses and also redirect or re-engineer a
major roadway that runs north of the airport. So a new site became imperative. The new airport
will be located in an area that is primarily field and wooded area that surround West Bay. Along
the shore of West Bay is a marshy area that serves as a breeding area for shore birds. The new
airport will be sited to minimize the sound of jets as they make the approach. When you look at
the layout map, you will see that the brown area (woods) and green area (naturally maintained
lands) make up the greatest parcels surrounding the airport properties. Even the housing sites
(yellow) are planned to have minimal impact on the natural life of the area. The runways will be
10,600 feet to satisfy wide-body cargo aircraft. While the airport developers recognize that the
passenger traffic does not justify wide bodies at this time, the location of Bay County Airport, only
an hour in the air past Miami, gives it a real competitive advantage in getting trucks on the road to
southeast cities. Clearing cargo at the new airport will be much simpler and you are getting a
jump start to I-10, I-75 and I-95. If all goes well, the first shovel goes into the ground in May of this
year and the new airport is expected to be operation in 2008.

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