Cheyenne airport takes off into commercial ventures

Office, retail combine with facilities upgrade

CHEYENNE – Business at Cheyenne Municipal Airport is taking off, and not just because the airport has a new commercial airline with bigger planes. The airport’s perimeter is bustling, with a new office-building under construction in the Cheyenne Aviation Technical Center on the south side, a new retail strip mall on the north side, a booming airplane-refurbishing business in a historic hangar and more runway improvements and expansions in the near future. “We’re excited about having something going in the business park, on Dell Range, a new airline, airport improvement projects and a growing general-aviation business,´ said airport director Jerry Olson. “We feel like we’re hitting on all fronts right now, and that’s our goal – to have a diversity of services and revenue.” In fact, the airport derives nearly a third of its revenue from its 65-acre business park, the Cheyenne Aviation Technical Center, launched in 1990-91 on the south side of the field. The business park soon will be home to an airport-financed $3.7 million, 42,000-square-foot Parkway Professional Office Building, located next to the National Weather Service and across Airport Parkway from Preston University, two other anchor tenants at the park. Office-building tenants will include the Wyoming Student Loan Corp., several dentists, and an oil and gas firm. The business park has 56 acres of runway-accessible land for aviation use, including eventually a new terminal, plus 9 acres for nonaviation uses. When the office building is finished, the business park will have 15 businesses and probably close to 150 employees. Meanwhile, ground has been broken on the airport’s north side, the military side, for Dell Range Pavilion, a shopping strip mall that will include a new Golden Corral restaurant and a new Office Depot office-supply store. That development is being undertaken by Cornfeld-Koslosky Properties of Denver on land leased from the airport. “It’s interesting being in the retail, strip-mall-development business, but we’re excited about getting these national retailers to come to Cheyenne and expand,” Olson said. Already booming is Cheyenne Airmotive, a new firm that specializes in custom aircraft interiors, painting and maintenance, in a hangar once billed as the world’s largest when it was operated by Boeing and United Airlines. “That company is going to play a key role in being the magnet for attracting new and similar businesses to the airport,” Olson said, calling Cheyenne Airmotive “a shining star for us.” A runway grooving and contouring project is in progress, and next year the airport will embark on a $15 million runway expansion project that will lengthen the main east-west runway from 9,200 feet to 9,700 feet and also move it slightly to the east as a safety measure. Then there is the excitement of having a new commuter airline, Air Wisconsin, flying as United Express between Cheyenne and Denver. Olson said Air Wisconsin boardings are rising as Cheyenne fliers discover the comfort of Air Wisconsin’s 32-passenger Dornier turbo-props. Not bad for a 78-year-old airport that today finds itself in the middle of a city. The airport’s central location occasionally presents some problems, such as noise and safety concerns that prompted purchase and relocation of 50 homes at the end of the cross-wind runway three years ago. That safety zone area now has been turned into an attractive park and entrance to the Cheyenne Aviation Tech Center. “Our airport sells location, location, location,” Olson said. “Not only our closeness to Denver and DIA, but having our airport located a mile from the state Capitol building in the middle of the city. Sometimes there are some environmental challenges – and we’ve addressed those – but on the other side of the coin, there’s a real value to having an airport located near the middle of a city, and we’re trying to exploit those advantages.” Periodically, somebody suggests relocating the airport, but according to Olson, that simply will not happen because of the tremendous city and military investment in the airport and the unlikelihood of obtaining any help from the Federal Aviation Administration to finance a new airport. “We’ve invested heavily over the past, the airport’s staying here, and we’re going to continue to invest in the airfield,” Olson said. “Since 1989, we’ve spent $32 million on improvements to the airport, so we’ve been doing about $3 million a year, and we see that ratcheting up some.” This year’s budget is $7.9 million. The other suggestion that keeps cropping up is a proposal to build a north-south tunnel under the airport to reduce traffic congestion around the east and west ends of the airport and crowded Dell Range to the north. “I think people freak out when they hear $20 million for a tunnel, and I agree,” Olson said, “but if you want to take congestion off of Dell Range, a tunnel under the airport makes a tremendous lot of sense, and having a four-lane go right by the (new) terminal would make sense.”