Telluride Mulls $50m Airport Expansion

December 8, 2003 

Telluride Mulls $50m Airport Expansion 
Durango Herald, CO

TELLURIDE Three decades ago, when Beverly Hills entrepreneur Joe Zoline opened 
a couple of ski lifts in this steep, isolated valley in Southwest Colorado, he 
acknowledged that his new venture wasn't an easy sell. 

"Telluride is remote and hard to get to," he said in 1973. "It is making it 
hard to create a successful resort from scratch." He persisted, predicting 
optimistically that the valley's scenery and silence would be the secret of its 
"great and lasting success." 

Today, it seems that Zoline was onto something: Telluride remains tough to get 
to, but it boasts a hectic schedule of summer festivals and a busy ski season. 
Still, how isolated is too isolated? When Telluride's tiny regional airport 
recently proposed $50 million in improvements and expansions, it reactivated 
debate over the valley's longstanding survival strategy. 

Some of the possible changes to the airport, say critics, would require 
intrusive construction projects, lead to increased air traffic and noise 
pollution, and erode Telluride's lucrative storybook atmosphere. 

"The fact that we're quiet and beautiful is why most of us live here and why 
our guests come here," argues Pamela Lifton-Zoline, Joe Zoline's daughter and a 
longtime Telluride resident. "We don't need to get super-enthusiastic about the 
idea that people want to give us all sorts of money to chew up our mesas and 
make our airport bigger." 

A matter of economic survival? 

Perched on the top of a mesa at 9,078 feet above sea level, Telluride Regional 
Airport is the nation's highest commercial airport. Turboprops from four 
commercial airlines connect Telluride with regional hubs in Denver and Phoenix, 
and private planes shuttle of the well-heeled. 

While the accident rate at Telluride hasn't been out of the ordinary, pilots 
have to be conservative about weight restrictions because of the thin air and 
the lack of wiggle room between the runway and the mesa edges. They also have 
to be wary of the runway, which is about 65 feet higher at the ends than in the 
middle, forming what's known around town as the "infamous dip." So three years 
ago, the Telluride Regional Airport Authority which oversees the airport and 
functions as a quasi-governmental organization approached the Federal Aviation 
Administration and asked for funding for safety improvements. 

The FAA said it was willing to provide grant money not only for fixing the 
runway, but also for expanding safety areas around the runway and building 
runway extensions including a 600-foot "displaced threshold" that would allow 
takeoff of commercial jets, and safer operation of the private jets that 
already use the airport. Because of the airport's precarious geography, the 
safety-area expansion and the runway extensions would require construction of 
two large retaining walls above the two-lane road into Telluride. The walls 
would top out at 85 feet and 130 feet. 

Almost all the funding for the construction would come from the federal Airport 
Improvement Program, which is funded by airport user fees and fuel taxes, and 
often a key source of money for rural airports. 

The Telluride airport authority went public with the plan in August 2002, and 
the San Miguel Planning Commission approved it with some conditions last May. 
Now, the authority must secure the approval of the three-member county 
commission. 

Lifton-Zoline and a few other residents, alarmed by the scale of the proposal, 
have formed a group called Citizens for a Safe, Small, Quiet Telluride Airport. 
Group members generally support fixing the runway, but oppose the expansion 
projects. Many would rather see federal and local funds spent on the already 
jet-accessible airport in Montrose, about an hour and a half away. 

Supporters of the full set of projects, including outgoing Telluride mayor and 
airport board member John Steel, counter that the expansion is important to 
Telluride's economic survival: Some airlines have said they plan to phase out 
turboprops and move to regional jets. 

Airport manager Richard Nuttall is somewhat more sanguine. "Regional jets may 
become more prominent, but turboprops aren't going to go away completely," he 
says. "There's always some entrepreneur that's going to fill the void." 

Whether the runway extensions would increase the number of flights in and out 
of Telluride is unclear. Nuttall says consumer demand will be the ultimate 
decision maker. "The idea that if you build it, they will come' doesn't work in 
this business," he says. 

A slippery slope 

But consumer demand may follow close on the heels of an expanded airport, says 
Ray Rasker of the Bozeman, Mont., office of the Sonoran Institute. Rasker, who 
has studied growth in many Western resort towns, says improvements in air 
service often bring in a wave of new people and businesses, especially 
"footloose entrepreneurs" who want to live in a rural area but need to travel 
frequently. 

Though towns with up-to-date airports are thriving economically, they're no 
longer the funky, out-of-the-way places they used to be. "The expansion of an 
airport facilitates the transition into something much more diverse," says 
Rasker. "Jackson (Wyo.) is not really a resort community any more it has all 
sorts of businesses and Bozeman (Mont.) is a bedroom community for places like 
Seattle and Salt Lake." 

So will Telluride take a $50 million step toward becoming what Rasker calls a 
"micropolitan" area? The San Miguel County commissioners are expected to answer 
the question in March 2004. 

 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dc/dcboard.php

*****************************************