DeKALB – The good news about DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport is it has the capacity to increase its operations, said Roger Hopkins, the city’s economic development consultant.
“This is a pretty good general aviation airport. It’s improved pretty significantly over the last 10-12 years,” he told the Airport Advisory Board during its Wednesday meeting.
But the city has not fully capitalized on its potential, he said. Operations per day are low compared to neighboring cities with municipal airports.
A marketing plan introduced during the Oct. 10 Committee of the Whole meeting could foster changes. City officials are hoping to use it to attract more business to the airport to make it more financially self-sufficient.
For the past few years, the airport has operated with a deficit that the city’s general fund has filled.
Hopkins said some ways to change that is to open up more hangar space for corporate and recreational aviators. The report suggests the city convert at least one hangar – now used as a warehouse for maintenance equipment – into a corporate hangar if DeKalb can acquire another industrial building nearby.
Hopkins said that would help the airport gain a new building without having to build one.
But board member Jack Bennett said the city should not forget local, private aircraft owners who he said often store their planes on farm fields or in airports in Sandwich and Rochelle.
Appealing to those aviators by building hangars for their smaller planes could help create business and a more active and positive culture at the airport.
“This has been a policy that has not encouraged private aviation, and I would like to see one that would,” Bennett said.
Hopkins said the city still has to work to appeal to corporate, freight and other business uses of the airport to bring in money and fill in the airport’s deficit.
Both he and Airport Manager Tom Cleveland said the airport does see a lot of use from corporate jets when executives from companies such as Sonoco, Schnucks and AT&T fly in to check on locations in the DeKalb County area.
Northern Illinois University also has used the airport for transporting its basketball and volleyball teams, Cleveland said.
But there could be opportunities for freight and other passenger travel if the city commits to a marketing plan that directly targets those businesses. Hopkins said getting other economic developments in play – such as developing more hotels conducive to large business gatherings – would have a ripple effect for the airport.
The plan also calls for marketing land near the airport to business developers. City officials hope for some light industrial or commercial development along Peace Road near the airport.
The board reacted positively to the report, and said it would keep the report for another month and make more formal recommendations at its November meeting before forwarding the plan to the city council for approval.
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