Thursday, November 17, 2011

More trade, jobs, retail in Liberty Municipal Airport (T78) vision.

Liberty loses none of its homey charm, and it gains jobs, provided by emerging companies doing business in Liberty, convenient city-based retail shopping, and city revenue that may ease the tax burden on residents. This is a collective vision of Liberty viewed through the lens of Liberty Municipal Airport expansion.

There is city and the Texas Department of Transportation jointly funded “dirt work” underway that will literally help to pave the way for the construction of 20 hangars for smaller planes, all of which already have been leased, a sign of the demand. TxDOT foots virtually the whole bill.

The next step is the purchase of 62.37 acres on the airport’s north side, space in which the runway will be extended so that larger commercial aircraft will be able to land there.

The Liberty Community Development Corporation on Nov. 16 unanimously green lighted CDC attorneys to make the deal, practically culminating a plan forged about a year ago. While the sellers and CDC counsel hammer out a contract, the acquisition cost is unavailable.

When Liberty becomes a regional retail hub, in part due to airport expansion, commercial overnight shipping companies and any other potential corporate jet operators will not be the sole beneficiaries. The vision is about the people whose feet are already on the ground, according to two CDC officers.

“The first things you will see are convenience stores and gas stations, and you are going to see other businesses,” Vice President Mike McCarty said. “Then you are going to see – for people out there in that area – their property values will rise. They will be able to sell it, if they want.”

The state realized the potential long ago.

“There have been interests by TxDOT to have an extended runway in this area, between Houston and Beaumont and out of the Houston air traffic,” McCarty said. “With an extended runway, that would open up commercial interests in that airport. It would no longer be a small municipal airport. It would have the ability to land larger aircraft.”

The state wants to see the vision realized as much as the CDC and the city.

“Once this step is made, it’s going to move pretty rapidly,” McCarty said. “Once it is acquired, TxDOT will put us in a fast lane – with funds. There will be grants to help pay for this.”

Burgeoning landings will spawn job growth, as an increasing number of businesses operate there.

“Big business nowadays travels by corporate jet,” President Dennis Beasley said. “They need places to park those. They need places to service them. They will fly in here, leave their jet. … By leaving their jet here, that means there will be businesses developed to work on them, service them and restore them. Those people will need other types of businesses to supply them. So it is just a whole new avenue of business development.”

Highway 90, which today reaches to Interstate 10 in Houston, simplifies a flight into Liberty in order to do business in and around Liberty County, in Houston for instance. As the CDC members see it, the ensuing airport improvements are the right moves at the right time.

“Dennis and I have both been on the LCDC for [respectively] 13 years and almost 14 years,” McCarty said. “We saw several years ago, when Liberty annexed properties all the way to the airport, this was in the vision years ago. We no longer just own the airport. The city now reaches out to the airport. That was necessary. We’re going to do something.”

Commercial regionalization among cities and counties is, in effect, a microcosm of globalization; hence Liberty is a small town with substantially broader radiating economic footprints. There is one salient distinction. The jobs and the resultant revenue stay here.

“We’re only 9,000 population, but our trade area is about 77,000,” Beasley said.

Airport expansion thus comports with Liberty’s placement as a key spoke in the wheel of regional commerce.

“The city reaches out farther than its city limits every day,” McCarty said, using the fire department as the first example. “But, then again, outside of our city limits, they trade here, they do business here, they work here. So the City of Liberty may have city limits, but everything around us is a part of the community.”


http://www.yourhoustonnews.com

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