Cleveland Trust

Arguments that have been offered for keeping Burke in operation over the years: ✅ it is a needed reliever airport ✅ it is necessary for organ transplants at the Clinic ✅ it is built on a toxic landfill ✅ focus on infill downtown first ✅ the Federal Reserve uses it daily ✅ there is “strong demand” for downtown air travel ✅ it is an economic engine ✅ Haslam and Gilbert fly home from Burke ✅ there is a commercial flight to Cincinnati ✅ people have argued to close it every year for 30 years ✅ the FAA will not allow the City to close it ^^^ These issues have all been addressed, most of them in the 2002 GCBL study.

How about calling it something more fitting? Let’s call it: Cleveland Drug Mart Grand Prix $$$ Thats what some people call it already. ?

Sorry. I guess I used a specifc example to frame the issue of term limits.

Corruption looks like incompetence from the outside. I’m beginning to wonder if Burke Lakefront Airport is a simulation. It has the pretense of an airport with a trickle of planes taking off and landing but it is not a real airport. What if someone engineered an “airport” with gaps in security that could be exploited to create hidden revenue streams that cannot be publicly defended. https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2008/07/agents_search_office_of_cuyaho.html Is incompetence a better explanation? I don’t see a thread for incompetence.

There is speculation that Frank Jackson may run for a historic fifth term as Cleveland’s mayor in 2021. How does everyone feel about this? Should Cleveland have term limits?

Hello Cuyahoga County Airport enthusiast(s)! Im posting here looking for feed back. I have been doing some IRL activism to close an underperforming airport in Cleveland, Burke Lakefront Airport and was looking for some outsider perspective. There is data that suggests the party’s over at Burke. My question—based on this 2013 graph—would you support consolidating the three Cuyahoga County airports into two? Your airport could really gain traffic and Hopkins could take our one commercial flight per day. What I’d really like to see is the land north of downtown developed and the land Burke sits on turned into a park. You can see in the image below that Cleveland’s most valuable land is a desert. Trying to change that. Do you think it is feasible? Why or why not?

https://www.cleveland.com/business/2019/09/high-end-condo-project-resurrected-by-new-developer.html

Then it would be cool interview Frank Jackson about why he won’t consider closing Burke. I have been searching the record for good reasons to keep Burke open and I can’t find any City Hall talking point that hasn’t been debunked. I just want want to know what information I’m missing that would change my mind. What is the plan down there?

Not sure. His lakefront plan was never realized, unlike Crocker Park in Westlake.

What are the best reasons to keep Burke Lakefront Airport open?

Stark had a lakefront redevelopment plan in his back pocket since high school. The airport had to go or you would end up with a tangle of “spaghetti connections” and the connections to the city had to be done right or the development wouldn’t work. Parking and transit would be below a raised platform of city streets like east of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. At one point Progressive Insurance had a design for a three-tower complex with a modern art museum designed by Frank Ghery that would span the 15 acre gulch between downtown and the lakefront. Nothing happened. Progressive expanded in the suburbs. Stark moved on to do Crocker Park. The plan that eventually emerged as Pesht was an old teenage dream to reinvent Cleveland that he couldn’t let go. Im not saying Burke is solely responsible for tanking every development on the lakefront but I think it plays a big role in how every development is contextualized. We are never going to get the grand design that we deserve. I don’t know if you ever do interviews but Stark might be a good person to interview for a Neo Trans exclusive.

Cleveland loses between $2 mil-$3 mil operating Burke every year. They spend another $1.7 mil per year on average of Federal AIP grant money since 1982, plus a portion of a recent $20 million grant: https://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/2019/06/faa-awards-20m-for-upgrades-at-cleveland-hopkins-international-airport-burke-lakefront-airport.html It is natural though that if you have two airports you have to remove snow from two runways, secure two airfields, maintain two airfields. All normal stuff. But is it in the civic interest to spend this money on a money-losing airport just to get more Federal money to keep it up? Why not get rid of that airport and send operations to Hopkins as proposed here: https://www.gcbl.org/files/resources/burkereport.pdf

Baseless assertion: “[my] nonsense.” My nonsense: any hard data that supports closing Burke We are not compatible.

1. The article is more about loopholes in airport security not the recent example of human trafficking. 2. I don’t care how much it costs to land a plane like Epstein’s. Not the point. 3. TSA agents and all airline employees ARE trained to identify smugglers. Burke is more like Teterboro, no prying eyes. Totally unrelated. Have you read Cherry by by Nico Walker? Good book. Is there really a Rock and Roll McDonalds on Carnegie?

You totally owned me.

Oh how the Burke shills like jokes. Check this one out: And a lot of those flights are 30 minute BKL to BKL training flights. ? And some are 7 minute BKL to CLE. ?

I wish we would give up on other stuff. It’s distracting us from this closing Burke idea. You know, the proven economic catalyst that should be our priority and will take Cleveland to the next level but City Hall won’t talk about it because reasons. Small airports are in the news: https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/what-do-jeffrey-epstein-sex-traffic-ring-flights-say-about-teterboro/ar-AAGmGxi You can “evade prying eyes,” at some of these smaller airports where you can land a plane for 5 bucks (it only costs 5 bucks to land a plane at Burke and yet only one daily flight to Cincinnati ?, you’d think airlines would be lined up to take advantage but nah) and there is no TSA oversight, Burke is going to be a Park. You’re gonna ❤️ love it.

https://m.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-sweetest-deal/Content?oid=1494374 Not news but this is a good read from 2006 about the bombast surrounding the expansion of Hopkins. "What we're discussing here is 1,000 Browns deals," [Mike] White was quoted as saying. "What we're discussing here is 2,000 Gateway deals, in terms of economic importance. We must expand, or we will die." Not sure he was telling the truth.

Oh wow! This image-heavy agenda should be split up into appropriate threads but here is the general link: http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/designreview/drcagenda/2019/07192019/index.php#myGallery

The dollar amount seems high since there was no development proposal in place. Looks like they want to negotiate a settlement. They may be pouncing on an opportunity presented because the city did not follow procedure. But it appears the city did not follow procedure.

It seems that this is the element that alludes most people surprised by our job loss, loss of businesses and population decline. Talent is what drives economics. Talent is notoriously picky. They will not live in a podunk town when there is an alternative that is more attractive. Businesses must go where they are more likely to attract talent. Did you think Minneapolis was just gonna hand over those jobs? Nah, they’re gonna work the talent angle. That city is out there hustling to grow.

Minneapolis is try’na steal your date. She’s a 10 and smart and we’re a 6 with issues.

Yes, city hall lacks transparency on many development issues that make no econmic sense. Hope they can produce those records to support their claim. “Cleveland.com conducted its own search of records of City Council actions and found no legislation vacating Old Ontario.” Oh.

MLO claims City Hall destroyed property’s value. https://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/2019/07/lawsuit-seeks-115m-claiming-cleveland-destroyed-propertys-value-when-old-street-became-a-park.html

I’ve deleted a link. You’ll hear no more out of me on Burke. I’ll let you guys debate the same debunked City Hall talking points every three years. But y’all may find out you’re straight up suckas! I know I was. On a final note: It might be helpful to get the city to sign a position statement on keeping Burke open with support for asserting we have a “strong local market.” I cannot find anything in the public record to support this statement but thousands of datapoints supporting the opposite, support to close Burke 10 years ago. I’d like to see some numbers but nobody is allowed to talk about Burke. It is always no comment. Its weird. A little data could end this debate once and for all. But the debate cannot even take place. What does that tell you? Think about it. We’re all suckas, all us armchair urban planners. Close Burke and the number of projects on this forum will double or triple. Some cities make good decisions. Some cities make bad decisions. We are the city. We give the mandate. In the end, you end up with the city that you deserve. We deserve better.