FORT ANN -- Two pilots who planned to expand their businesses at Warren County Airport have instead set their sights on a private airport in Fort Ann that they plan to buy and improve.
Chris Hatin and Bruce Mowery are under contract to purchase Harris Field, a one-runway airport off Route 149. They plan to base their businesses there, build hangars and be a "general home for aviation" in the region.
That would include flight schools, maintenance, sales, balloon flights, a helipad and whatever else the local aviation community wants, Hatin said.
"We have a lot of potential there to do a lot of things," Mowery said.
The two men had reached an agreement earlier this year with Warren County officials to build a hangar at the county-owned airport in Queensbury to base their businesses there. But they have chosen to instead go to Fort Ann.
Mowery operates North Country Heliflite, a helicopter tours and flight training business, while Hatin operates Bushwhacker Aircraft Co., which builds replica Piper Cub aircraft.
Harris Airport was owned by pilot and local businessman Keith L. Harris, who died in a December 2008 plane crash in Michigan.
The airport is on a 170-acre piece of land off Route 149, near Cartier Lane. It includes a building and airstrip with a 2,400-foot runway.
Hatin, a Queensbury resident and investigator with the Warren County Sheriff's Office, said he and his partner hope to expand operations there after the purchase is complete. He did not release a purchase price but said they plan to go to the first Fort Ann Planning Board meeting after they close on the property in the next week or two.
He said he and Mowery reconsidered going to Warren County Airport after the town of Queensbury realized earlier this year that hangars at the airport were being improperly taxed, resulting in higher tax bills for the airport's fixed-base operator.
"The county was going in a direction that didn't seem conducive to our business, so we decided to go in a different direction," Hatin said. "We felt we had to have better control over our future."
"Warren County Airport is going more in the direction of business jets and higher-end stuff," Mowery added. "General aviation is second now."
Warren county Administrator Paul Dusek said county officials understood that Hatin and Mowery made a decision in the best interest of their businesses.
"We were looking forward to having them as a tenant at the airport, but we respect that they made a decision that they believe was best for their business," he said.
Mowery said he and Hatin plan to keep the airport named Harris Field in honor of Harris, with whom Mowery said he was friends for decades.
"It was always a dream of Keith's to do something like this with the property," Mowery said.
Harris' son, Keith Harris, would not discuss the potential sale on Tuesday, calling it "personal business."
Fort Ann Supervisor Gayle Hall did not return a phone call Tuesday.
The elder Keith Harris died at age 47 in a Dec. 6, 2008, plane crash in Kalkaska, Mich. A Cessna 206 he was piloting went down in bad weather that day as he was flying from St. Paul, Minn. to Warren County. The plane hit trees and a home.
In a report released last summer, the National Transportation Safety Board attributed the crash at least in part to Harris' inexperience flying under instrument flight rules conditions.
"Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to comply with instrument flight procedures and his lack of recent instrument flight experience," the report states.
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