Airport Master Plan October 1985

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The maintenance hangar requirements forecast at Gateway indicate that a sizeable capital investment in facilities may be required. This may be provided by the City and leased to the FRO or a lease arrangement may be developed permitting an FRO to construct his own facilities on leased land. In this case, the FBO would pay an agreed upon land rental (subject to periodic upward revisions), and construct his own facilities at his cost. In most cases, this type of lease requires a long-term agreement, such as 15 or even 20 years, and either arranges for the facilities constructed by the FB0 to become the property of the airport at the conclusion of the lease period after amortization, or stipulates that capital improvements on the land be removed upon lease expiration. Generally, these types of leases will provide options to renew. In addition to whichever base rental method used, the FBO leases should include the provision of a local fuel flo- wage fee based on a percentage of total fuel sales. The City should adopt a set of minimum standards to pro- tect the legitimate FBO from cut throat competition. Similarily, minimum standards should be developed and adopted for all other types of leases. This enables a competitive atmosphere complying with FAA requirements, and at the same time, prevents indiscriminate or sub- standard building and operating conditions on the field. Once airfield improvements are made and operations begin to approach 20,000 to 25,000 annually, a reasonably stable source of revenue should be achieved. In all likelihood, however, the airport will not operate at a totally self- sufficient level. 10.11 Induced and Non -tangible Benefits The social and economic significance of a general aviation airport to a community is perhaps one of the most under- stated and misunderstood concepts to the general public. In its broadest sense, the term "general aviation", is all flying except that performed by the military and the sche- duled airlines. This broad scope of activity is what makes general aviation an important asset to a community. Scheduled airlines have a combined fleet of approximately 2400 planes which carry passengers to and from 400 air- ports in the nation. The majority of total passenger enplanements and departures occurred at just 15 of the 400 airports. In contrast, the general aviation fleet in- 10-19