In 15 years as manager of Bridgeport's Sikorsky Memorial Airport, John Ricci has seen death, destruction, floods, the withering away of commercial flights and Stratford's unending opposition to expansion plans.
Now, he says, it's time for the city of Bridgeport to sell the 800-acre landmark to the state, which would have an easier time forcing improvements on Stratford and transform the historic field -- the nation's first air show was held there in 1911 -- into a regional economic turbo-prop.
Ricci and others, including Bridgeport Mayor John M. Fabrizi, are ready to concede victory to the Stratford NIMBYs and let the state take over the management of the $1.5 million-a-year operation after 60 years of city ownership.
They believe that the airport has the potential to fit nicely into Gov. M. Jodi Rell's unified theory of local development projects benefiting transportation and regional business growth in a cascade effect.
"I think the best government agency to run an airport would be the state, not a municipality," Ricci said last week, pointing to urgent infrastructure needs, including the demolition of an aging airport building that the city simply cannot afford.
The state, he said, could mandate longer runways that would make the facility competitive with Tweed-New Haven Airport, Westchester County Airport in New York and even Oxford Airport, which in recent years has received millions of dollars in state funds to expand and update.
"We could probably use a million-and-a-half dollars right away," Ricci said from his office overlooking the main, 4,800-foot runway, which 20 years ago hosted daily commercial flights for Delta Connection, Continental Connection and US Airways Express.
Westchester, by comparison, has a 7,000-foot runway with plenty of room for commercial flights that ceased in Bridgeport back in 1999.
State Rep. Robert T. Keeley Jr., D-Bridgeport, has submitted legislation that would turn the airport over to the state to operate like a smaller version of Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.
Keeley said that since Stratford has failed in developing the sprawling former Stratford Army Engine Plant on Main Street, a state takeover of the airport could be just what is needed to attract tenants to feed -- and be fed off -- a revitalized airport.
Keeley said with Lordship real estate at a peak, it's no secret that there's less air traffic and virtually no loud jets as technology has quieted them.
"I understand Lordship doesn't like it, but they knew there was an airport here when they bought their homes," Keeley said.
Speaker of the House James A. Amann, D-Milford, said last week he favors the proposal, which he believes could foster the so-called Smart Grow philosophy of regional-development objectives.
"We need an expanded airport," Amann said.
Paul S. Timpanelli, President and CEO of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, was enthusiastic last week about the idea.
"If you look at any major urban regional center around the country that has been revitalized, one of the things that's always on the list is that they invest heavily in a regional airport," Timpanelli said. "I'm a strong believer that any public infrastructure asset that's regional in nature should not be locally owned."
He said that for the Bridgeport region to rebound, the return of commercial air traffic is a necessity.
"We need commercial flights to commercial hubs, like Atlanta, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh," Timpanelli said, stressing that the development of the vacant Stratford Army Engine Plant, would be a lot easier with a revitalized airport.
"Even if we have just one flight a day to the commercial hubs, that piece of real estate would become much more valuable if it were a real airport and that could become a significant development that could impact Stratford's tax base," Timpanelli said.
Fabrizi said Friday that the state "simply has more resources" than the city and has the experience operating several airports in the state.
"The airport would benefit the entire region under the auspices of the state of Connecticut," the mayor said. "Stratford has indicated their biases against the airport and I truly want to explore this opportunity with the state. Of course, the price has to be right."
Sen. Bill Finch, D-Bridgeport, vice chairman of the legislative Transportation Committee, said Friday that a state takeover makes sense.
"I think it's long overdue," Finch said. "It's the only way we're going to get any objective, long-range plan for the airport. It shouldn't be a landing field for private airplanes with a few corporate jets, it should be maximized to its full potential."
Gov. M. Jodi Rell was noncommittal last week when informed of the legislative proposal.
"We haven't seen the bill, but it's certainly something we'd have to take a look at and judge on the merits, including the potential economic impact and opportunity for the state," said Rich Harris, the governor's spokesman.
Long-time opponents of an airport expansion, which would entail diverting Main Street to the east, deny the project would help Stratford.
Milton C. McDonald, 80, a retired sales manager who lives in the town's Paradise Green area, said that the entire airport should be closed and sold off for its development potential.
"For the state economy and Stratford's economy, I'd like to see some good industrial development and that's why I'm against airport expansion," he said.
Tweed-New Haven Airport, a half-hour up the coast by car, should be the destination focus for air traffic in southwestern Connecticut, McDonald said.
"If they put in an expansion, it's going to knock off Main Street," McDonald said last week, recalling a history of flooding at the eastern edge of the main landing strip, south of the site of a 1994 crash that killed eight of nine people aboard a charter flight from Atlantic City.
"Even when they had regular flights, Stratford never got anything out of the airport," McDonald said. "If the state got it they're going to play politics and sure as hell, you know and I know they would expand the airport at our expense."
Walter Rimkunas, 76, a retired engine tester at the former engine plant, which was acquired by Allied Signal in the late-1980s, has been an airport opponent since 1951.
From his Second Avenue home, Rimkunas sees most air traffic there, including the existing morning commuter helicopter service.
"We still have corporate jets and those helicopters shake the house at 6:30 every morning," Rimkunas said. The key to controlling the airport, he said, is to keep Main Street where it is.
"Stratford will not benefit by an expansion of the airport, the only people who would benefit are those proposing the expansion of the runway," he said.
Stratford Mayor James Miron said last week that he would rather buy the airport from the city than watch the state take it over for expansion.
"It's a low-demand airport," Miron said. "When you're in the air, you can see that Stratford and Tweed-New Haven are right next to each other. I can drive there in 20 minutes."
More than 200 developable acres near the water would have prime potential for everything from residential to business and recreational uses, he said.
"I'm trying to work with the mayor and the region," Miron said. "I'm very very interested in Stratford buying the airport. Frankly, I think Stratford controlling and owning the airport makes a lot more sense."
Miron stressed the need for an extensive market analysis to see how the airport and the vacant, sprawling former engine plant could evolve in the best interests of the town and region.
"I hope the Legislature takes a deliberate approach," Miron said. "If they want to move that asset, we're ready to have serious discussions for cash money and I'm confident members of the town council would support it."
Fourteen Bridgeport employees work at the airport, including five airport certification specialists who monitor the strength of the runways and the status of fuel tanks. They make up about half the operating budget, Ricci said.
The end of commercial operations coincided with the advent of regional jets away from turbo props. "We can't handle the bigger jets," Ricci said. Fortunately, more and more private jets are using Sikorsky as their home airports, including the popular G-3 jets.
"General Electric jets are in and out of here every day, although they're based at Westchester," Ricci said.
About 220 planes are based at Sikorsky and there are about 130,000 "air operations" -- from touch and go landings, to student lessons and charter take offs -- annually.
Morgan Kaolian, who's been flying in and out of the airport since 1946 and once served as its manager, said he hopes once Gov. Rell's husband Lou Rell, a retired airline pilot gets wind of the idea, she might get some at-home lobbying.
"I would say to the governor please take it over, make it a going concern and get us some air service," said Kaolian, a long-time interstate highway reporter who regularly takes aerial photographs for the Connecticut Post.
He believes that some other pilots might not support expansion, because commercial uses would interfere somewhat with general aviation.
Kaolian, who owns four planes, said that too many Connecticut airports have closed in recent years, in Ansonia, Madison and Griswold. "We have to preserve and keep the ones we have," he said. "I also think we have to revive the Stratford Bridgeport Airport Advisory Committee.
Another pilot, Tim G. English, agrees that the state control would immensely help the airport.
"I am very positioned toward this airport coming under state control so it would bypass all these local fighting and feuding," he said last week. "It has been so political that it has been to the detriment of the airport over the last 20 years."
English, who was a student pilot there in the late 1950s, warned that airports are a vanishing treasure and that Sikorsky Memorial is perfectly situated.
"An airport is an asset for business development, for access to the rest of the world," English said. "They're some wonderful people who fly out of there."
It is the continual haggling with Stratford officials and the nearby Lordship neighborhood that has frustrated Ricci and the city's plans to improve the airport.
"We've been trying to convince Stratford for 15 years and now we're working with the second or third generation of opposition," Ricci said. "I don't think they even know why they're opposed, because most people in Lordship are immune to the activity."
Much of the airport property includes tidal wetlands, but there are about 250 acres of usable land, which has been used for planes since the dawn of the age of aviation.
A hundred years ago, it was a racetrack called Avon Field, with a huge flat, grass plain that was a landmark for early pilots.
In September 1911, the nation's first air show was held there. Famous early fliers, from Amelia Earhart to Charles Lindbergh, landed there.
Igor Sikorsky, who fled the Russian Revolution of 1917, set up his aviation company and perfected his flying boat planes, after early work on Long Island. His first helicopter took off in September 1939.
When Bridgeport purchased the airport in 1937, it was called Mollison Field, in dubious honor of Capt. James Mollison, who crashed there while trying to reach New York after a trans-Atlantic flight from Wales in Great Britain.
On April 27, 1994, eight people were killed when the pilot of a twin-engine Piper Navajo Chieftain operated by Action Airlines Inc. misjudged his landing in the fog, plowing the plane into the jet blast fence on the runway's east end.
In the existing economy, Keeley said that the airport has to grow to stay alive and competitive, just as the early aerial innovators helped the flying machines evolve.
"The only solution for that airport is for the state to own and operate it," Keeley said last week. "Otherwise it's going to be like Pleasure Beach and we'll be turning it over to the piping plovers."
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