Plans To Add Private Jet Hangars to Oregon’s Second-Busiest Airport Hit Turbulence
A planned expansion to Oregon’s second-busiest airport would add multiple hangars for private jet storage. As far as Hillsboro residents are concerned, the plan hasn’t been cleared for take off.
Two groups have appealed to halt the development at Hillsboro Airport, which would add seven hangars that could accommodate around 30 aircraft, documents show. Hillsboro City Council must now make the final call, and dozens of residents testified Tuesday night against the expansion.
“Hillsboro is better than a billionaire parking lot,” resident Christian Robertson told the City Council in public testimony.
The local government ultimately voted to postpone a decision on the appeals until October. New York-based Sky Harbour Group is spearheading the project, which would also include a fuel farm, parking and landscaping improvements, documents show. The new campus would cover 13.7 acres.
Sky Harbour operates in cities like Houston, Nashville, Miami, San Jose and Seattle. The company announced a long-term lease at the Hillsboro Airport on April 9, 2025, and has been working with the city to get the project approved. It underwent multiple iterations in that time, and at one point the company planned to have capacity for 38 to 42 private jets.
But those living nearby raised concerns about increased noise, pollution and traffic, among other things. The hangars would sit along Northeast Brookwood Parkway near businesses and neighborhoods, and be set aside for private individuals or business and corporate airplane owners, documents show. Nike co-founder Phil Knight already has a private flight hangar at the airport.
“What possible benefit would there be for any citizen of Hillsboro?” resident Cynthia Westby said during the Tuesday meeting. “None. The only beneficiaries of this jet hub will be the owners of the jets and Sky Harbour who will receive the rent for the hangars for those jets.”
The city’s planning commission voted 5-0 with one abstention to greenlight the updated hangar expansion on May 27, saying that the project was fully compliant with development code after Sky Harbour made adjustments.
Then came the appeals. Miki Barnes, a founding member of nonprofit Oregon Aviation Watch, led the first appeal, and three Hillsboro residents filed the second. They submitted the documents on June 17, alleging that the planning commission failed to adequately account for the impact the hangars will have on the surrounding area and approved the project without following its own procedural and development rules.
“These are not abstract or irrelevant concerns,” Carrie Richter, the attorney for Barnes’ petition, said. “They are the very operating characteristics the code requires the city to evaluate.”
Steven Hultberg, an attorney representing Sky Harbour, argued that many of the concerns residents raised are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, not city development code. He said that the project met all the code requirements to move forward.
“Your code talks about, not the use — it doesn’t talk about planes,” Hultberg said. “It talks about development. And your code also defines development as the physical alteration of the property. A jet blast is not the physical alteration of a property.”
City planning staff found that neither appeal met the criteria to halt the hangar expansion and recommended that the council deny them, documents show. The City Council must make a decision based solely on the applicable development code, officials warned.
This is not the first controversial issue to land at Hillsboro Airport. City Council voted last month to urge the Port of Portland, which oversees the aviation hub, to take all necessary steps to stop lead fuel usage at the airfield. Most planes don’t use fuel with lead, but small piston-engine aircraft common to the airfield typically do.
While Portland International Airport is largely dominated by commercial airlines, Hillsboro’s airfield caters to business and corporate jets, private planes, air ambulances and small aircraft. It does not offer commercial passenger flights.
The airport is classified as a “reliever airport,” designed to pull non-commercial flight activity away from a major airport, like Portland’s, to reduce congestion, documents show. It’s Oregon’s second busiest airport by air traffic, beating out smaller airfields like those in Eugene, Medford and Pendleton.
Plans for the private jet expansion remain in limbo. Councilors will take up the issue again Oct. 6, giving the public and Sky Harbour time to present additional evidence or concerns.
“Those of you who are waiting for the big decision, you didn’t get one tonight,” Mayor Beach Pace said. “Sorry.”
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