"Anchorage airport could benefit from base closure"

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Airport could spread wings without Kulis
The Anchorage (AK) Daily News


The proposed shutdown of Kulis Air Guard Station could help boost
Anchorage's economy by giving its international airport, which has been
increasingly hemmed in by development, more room to grow.

The airport was far from town and surrounded by open spaces 50 years ago
when the Alaska Air National Guard moved there from Elmendorf Air Force
Base.

On Friday, the Defense Department said it wants to shut down Kulis and move
the Air Guard back to Elmendorf. That, officials say, could benefit Ted
Stevens Anchorage International Airport, which has transformed itself in the
last 15 years into an important global air-cargo hub.

Closing Kulis would open the airport to further commercial development and
might offset some of the jobs that would be lost by moving the base's
aircraft and mission to Elmendorf, said Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, adjutant
general of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

"It might provide more job opportunities than (we're losing)," Campbell
said.

Anchorage's central location -- it's a nine-hour flight from 95 percent of
the industrialized world -- has helped the airport grow to become one of the
world's busiest cargo airports. Large international carriers including
FedEx, UPS, Northwest Airlines and many smaller outfits have set up shops
there.

Officials expect that growth to continue, but there's little room left to
expand the airport, which covers some 4,800 acres and is boxed in by housing
developments, parks and protected wetlands.

Opening up the 130-acre Kulis site would help alleviate that crunch and make
room for new businesses, said Mort Plumb, the state-owned airport's
director.

The airport owns the land, and leases it to the Air Guard for $1 a year. The
Guard also pays an annual "impact fee" for using the airport's taxiways and
runways, which is much lower than the landing fees commercial planes pay to
use the airport, Plumb said.

"If we were to lease out that land, it could generate a little over $500,000
a year at today's rates," Plumb said. "And that's not counting what it could
generate in landing fees."

Potential uses for the Kulis site, which is accessible from Raspberry Road,
could include air-cargo operations or maintenance, Plumb said.

Kulis -- named for 1st Lt. Albert Kulis, a pilot killed in his F-80 in 1954
-- is one of four Alaska military installations that could be affected by
the Defense Department's base realignment and closure plan. All 459 of its
military and civilian jobs would be lost.

In all, Alaska would lose more than 4,600 military jobs under the plan
announced Friday by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Before any of the closings or realignments take effect, a federal commission
and the president must approve the plan in the coming months. Congress has
the option to block it in its entirety.

The changes would be phased in over six years, starting next year.


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