I'm based at BDR and there's a lot more to this story than meets the eye.
The airport is actually in the town of Stratford but the city of
Bridgeport owns it. Stratford wanted some tax money for it as it is
quite a few acres of property. Bridgeport said "we are a municipal
organization, we don't have to pay property taxes" so Stratford took
them to court and the court sided with Bridgeport so it's been a ****ing
match ever since.
What Stratford doesn't realize is that Bridgeport is not going to be
handing back to the FAA any grant money, they don't have it to spare.
Bridgeport has lost pretty much all the manufacturing jobs it ever had,
there are factory buildings and warehouses standing empty and loads of
vacant space waiting for people to build something on it. There's no
demand for space in the Bridgeport area. Transportation is a disaster
here with I-95 choked with traffic and construction. Labor costs are
high and Connecticut has a pretty business-unfriendly
unemployment-insurance setup compared to other states. Most of the
manufacturing jobs have gone out of the country or down south. Hell,
even the presidential helicopter got awarded to Lockheed who are in bed
with some overseas outfits (who will wind up making parts for it).
The Urban Land Institute aparrently looked at the land and came up with
this proposal pretty quickly so you know how much thought went into it.
Across the street from the airport is the old Avco-lycoming factory
where until 6 or so years ago they built the turbine engines for the
tanks. That whole property except for a few small companies is sitting
empty and idle. There's no demand for manufacturing space.
This is just a politicians way to try and make some brownie points with
the constituents. They figure that the voters in town would rather have
a bunch of warehouses and tractor-trailers in their neighborhoods
instead of the few aircraft and very little auto traffic.
Robert
AirMan wrote:
http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.... 517515&rfi=8
http://www.connpost.com/Stories/0,14...earch=filt er