Opponents of Closing Hartford’s Brainard Airport Ramp Up Pressure, It’s Not ‘A Playground for Rich Folks’

A fledgling organization fighting to keep Hartford-Brainard Airport open ramped up the pressure Thursday arguing the push for closing the century-old airfield is coming without any solid plan for what would replace it.

“We feel very strongly that the citizens of greater Hartford have the right to know, in detail, just what is happening to this important facility,” Michael Teiger, a board member of the Hartford Brainard Airport Association, said, in a news conference at the airport. “It is our position that the benefits of the airport unquestionable out weigh any other alternative, whatever they might be.”

The association was formed earlier this month as the Hartford City Council pressed ahead with forming a task force that would outline the best path forward to shuttering Brainard and options for its future redevelopment.

Teiger said Thursday the association, now incorporated as a nonprofit, represents more than 100 pilots, business owners and others who want to see the century-old airport stay open.

Barbara Rowley, co-owner of VIP Avionics and related aircraft maintenance and instrument repair businesses at Brainard, said the 40-year-old business is one of the few offering such services in New England.

“We sell and service to customers in all 50 states,” Rowley said. “We bring in aircraft from all over New England and the mid- Atlantic states.”

Rowley said her company services state police aircraft, Life Star helicopters and the civil air patrol — not only in Connecticut but New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

“Brainard Airport provides a convenient and appropriate location and size to accomplish hundreds — literally hundreds — of FAA-mandated inspections every year to general aircraft owners, to private aircraft owners,” Rowley said.

Teiger rejected the notion that the airport is “a playground for rich folks” with single- and twin-engine planes.

“To the contrary, it is an unknown and poorly understood jewel, existing right in the center of our region that supports all the general aviation has to offer,” Teiger said.

Brainard, Teiger said, supports hundreds of jobs — directly and indirectly — and generates $3.36 million in state taxes annually. Teiger said the airport should be used as an amenity, including to attract new employers to the Hartford area.

Critics of the airport, including Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and state Sen. John W. Fonfara, D- Hartford, say the 200-acre airfield is at the enviable intersection of two interstate highways and with frontage on the riverfront.

Brainard would be better targeted for a mixed-use development, including housing, entertainment venues, shops and a marina, that would draw visitors and new residents into the city and provide a much-needed boost to city tax coffers, they say.

State-owned Brainard is controlled by the Connecticut Airport Authority, which says it has no plans to close the airfield. But Brainard could still be closed with a vote of the state legislature.

It also is expected that the report of council-formed task force will be submitted to the legislature to bolster the argument for closing Brainard.

The Metropolitan District Commission, the regional water and sewer authority, spearheaded an airport redevelopment proposal in 2006. The proposal called for nearly 7 million square feet of commercial and manufacturing space, stores, apartments, a marina, a rebuilt trash-to-energy plant, an expansion of its nearby wastewater treatment plant and a river park.

The MDC plan was headed up by William DiBella, a former Democratic state Senate majority leader who remains the MDC’s chairman.

No other conceptual plans for the area exist besides the 2006 vision advanced by the MDC.

A 2016 legislative report concluded the airport should remain open. The report recommended further investment in Brainard, rather than redevelopment.

Redevelopment, the report said, would be too costly, require large public subsidies and take at least two decades. Others have said contamination in the area, which includes the soon-to-be closed trash burning plant would be too costly.

The report has been dismissed by Fonfara and others who favor redevelopment.

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at [email protected]

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