FORT WORTH -- It was 1987 when developer Ross Perot Jr. and economist Ray Perryman took a helicopter ride to a cow pasture on the north Fort Worth prairie.
What if, Perot asked, pointing to Interstate 35W and a major line of the Santa Fe Railway, we put an airport right here?Twenty-five years later, it's much harder to find an empty field between downtown and the sprawling Texas Motor Speedway.Fort Worth Alliance Airport, developed by Perot's Hillwood Properties, opened in 1989.Despite a setback or two, it became the catalyst for the sprawling AllianceTexas development and massive growth along the I-35 corridor on the city's north side.In 2010, the 17,000-acre development -- which now boasts a grocery store, movie theaters, apartment complexes and retailers -- topped $40 billion in economic impact for the first time.For his part, Perryman named the construction of the industrial airport as one of the top 10 economic events for North Texas in the past 50 years.But today, even as north Fort Worth booms, the city-owned airport that helped start it all finds itself at a crossroads.A major aviation plant envisioned by Perot and city leaders never materialized.Two of its major tenants, American Airlines and Bell Helicopter, plan to leave.Its top executive, Tim Ward, who has run things from the beginning, is retiring at the end of the year.And, hoping to attract fully loaded 747s on transcontinental cargo flights, officials plan to spend $240 million to move roads, the rail line and lots of dirt, and extend the runways."Although the airport, in terms of the development around it, hasn't been completed as fast as we perhaps initially envisioned, it truly became a catalyst for everything else around here," Ward said, pointing to the intermodal rail yard and dozens of distribution centers that have opened in the surrounding AllianceTexas development.As Ward's successor, Tom Harris, takes over, the 1,200-acre airport is focused on attracting more cargo carriers and on finding a new tenant for American's large maintenance hangar.It also still has plenty of empty land near the runways."One of the ongoing challenges we have is to try to find other ways to develop that land for aviation users," Harris said.A plan notfully realizedFor a time in the early '90s, the concrete runways slicing away to the northwest were basically the only sight breaking the monotony of the drive north on I-35W.Slowly, that changed.Two years after Alliance Airport opened, its first tenant, American Airlines, built a maintenance facility. But it wasn't until FedEx opened its Southwest regional hub there in 1997 that airport operations finally turned a profit.The airport continues to generate revenue from landing fees and moves millions of pounds of cargo each year.Executives at Hillwood, which operates the airport, acknowledge that it has grown slower than the intermodal rail yard, its distribution warehouses, and the surrounding Alliance Town Center and neighborhoods."The only thing that is really missing from our original vision is a big major manufacturing facility linked to the runway," said Mike Berry, Hillwood Properties president.The airport did attract a final-assembly facility for Galaxy Aerospace. The company installed custom interiors and electronics equipment in business jets starting in 1997. But those operations moved to Dallas Love Field in 2003.Hillwood has tried to land several manufacturing projects over the years, such as Bell Helicopter's V-22 production, now in Amarillo; Boeing's new 787 plant, now in South Carolina; and Airbus' narrow-body-aircraft plant, which went to Alabama.In the end, Ward said, Alliance and Fort Worth couldn't compete with massive tax breaks offered by the winning locations."We've chased a lot of those big deals," he said. "Those projects are few and far between and, when you look at those deals, the state incentives are so high, that's usually what takes it over the edge."The failure to land a major facility left Alliance as a stand-alone cargo airport -- not typically a big moneymaker, aviation industry analyst Mike Boyd said. That's why there are so few of them, he said.The intermodal rail yard has been successful -- moving about 700,000 containers a year between trucks and trains, according to Hillwood -- but Boyd said rail doesn't pair well with a cargo airport."You don't air-cargo something over from Japan to save time so you can transship it onto a train that is going to take another eight days to get to its final destination," he said.Perot disagrees."You cannot have enough flexibility and enough options in the global supply chain," he said. "Our clients like having access to both air freight and rail."Hillwood, Perot said, hasn't given up on landing a manufacturing plant that could use both the runways and the rail facility. There is plenty of land on the west side of the airport, he said.Bad news,empty hangarsWithin the past year, airport executives had to absorb two pieces of bad news.As part of its bankruptcy restructuring, American's parent company, AMR Corp., announced that it will shut down the maintenance hangar by the end of the year. An engine repair facility, which is a joint venture with Rolls-Royce, will remain open at Alliance.Bell Helicopter, which has its commercial helicopter customer service center, showroom and training academy at Alliance, also plans to move all employees and offices to a new headquarters in Fort Worth.Bill Welstead, aviation director for Fort Worth, said he isn't worried."I don't foresee [Hillwood] having any problems filing those facilities," he said.Harris said about a dozen firms have looked at the 1.6-million-square-foot maintenance hangar, which sits on 202 acres on the northeast side of the runways. He said another aircraft maintenance company will likely one day use the hangar, which can accommodate seven wide-body planes parked wingtip to wingtip.Still, when American leaves, it will take about 15 percent of the airport's annual landing-fee revenue. The carrier typically pays $12,000 to $14,000 a month in such fees."Given the interest in the facility, I think it's a short-term gap in revenue loss that will be made up over time," Ward said. "A third-party operator will be driven to turn airplanes as quickly as they can, which means more airplanes landing and more revenue."In many ways, the development that the airport helped spark might, in turn, help the airport through a rough patch."They are certainly going to face some challenges, but because of the success of the rest of Alliance, they can ride this out," said Terry Clower, an economist at the University of North Texas."It's a matter of patience."Building for the futureAlliance's longest runway is 9,600 feet, enough concrete for FedEx's hub traffic, which includes MD-11s.It's also long enough for the wide-body aircraft that American services at its hangar.But for cargo carriers interested in flying around the globe, it's too short. They can't, for example, accommodate a fully loaded Boeing 747 headed to another continent.In 2000, Ward started planning to extend the runways to 11,000 feet.Over the past decade, he has won federal and state money to help fund the $240 million project.To date, the extension project has received $215 million from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Texas Department of Transportation and other sources. Before any additional concrete can be poured, Texas 121 and Farm Road 156 need to be rerouted and, starting in January, a rail line around the intermodal yard must be moved.The project is expected to be completed by 2016."We can't go nonstop to Asia on a hot August day," Perot said.(Air density decreases as temperatures rise, meaning planes need more runway to take off.)"And that's what we're going to be able to do," Perot said. "It helps us with our other logistics customers."The airport continues to improve its fixed-base operations for private planes and service for government aircraft.It sells more than 3 million gallons of jet fuel a year to airplanes that land at Alliance, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sends its entire fleet, about 100 planes, to the airport for maintenance."The service business we have here is something we will continue to grow over time," Harris said "Giving them that extra runway length to fly east nonstop will be very meaningful."The longer runways will also make Alliance more competitive with Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, which has 13,000-foot runways.Several new cargo carriers, including Asiana Cargo and Nippon Cargo Airways, added new flights to DFW this year.The runway extension, Clower said, is a low-risk investment that will likely help Alliance grow over the next few decades, even if it is not used immediately."It helps make this region a more attractive place for industrial activity," he said. "It's infrastructure that's good to have."Andrea Ahles, 817-390-7631Twitter: @Sky_TalkHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
