"Part 1 of 4: LA-area airport offers hope for Mesa's Gateway"

Saturday, May 27, 2006

First of a four-part series
LA-area airport offers hope for Mesa's Gateway 
The Arizona Republic


Ontario International Airport four decades ago was in the same pickle that
Williams Gateway Airport is in today.

The airfield east of Los Angeles was struggling to secure passenger and
cargo service. It had the infrastructure, the passenger terminal and plenty
of room to grow. But it wasn't getting the big names it had hoped.

It took only a few years for Ontario's luck to turn. The airport has been
growing exponentially since the 1970s, offering hundreds of flights a day
and pumping billions of dollars into the economy each year. 

Ontario is an example of a successful reliever airport. Because it came from
similar beginnings, it is an intriguing test case for what Williams Gateway
could become.

What is so important about securing daily passenger and cargo service, you
ask? Simple. 

Daily flights attract tourists and business travelers. 

The former group stays in hotels and spends money in nearby communities. 

The latter flies often and locates professional offices near airports.

Cargo service also attracts manufacturing and logistics firms, which need to
be near a place that can move products quickly and easily.

Bottom line: Both kinds of service create jobs and economic opportunities. 

That is exactly what Ontario needed. Sure, its founders were innovative in
the way they delivered water to area citrus fields and vineyards, making the
city generally self-sufficient for decades. Residents built a small, dusty
airstrip in the 1920s, which Lockheed used during World War II to train Army
Air Forces pilots. 

The city boomed when a steel mill opened just outside town. But by the '60s,
the mostly blue-collar city was hemorrhaging workers, and the money that
went with them, into Los Angeles. 

Same thing happened in Mesa, the home of Williams Gateway.

The city began life progressively, and its innovations helped Mesa grow into
the retail and job kingpin of the southeast Valley. But that has changed in
recent years. The city is now hemorrhaging workers and struggling
financially. 

Ontario figured development at the airport would be its ticket out of life
as a bedroom community. So the city began making airport improvements,
hoping to attract airlines and other private investments. It later zoned
thousands of acres surrounding the airport for business use.

Southeast Valley communities have done the same with Williams Gateway, a
former pilot training ground. 

When Williams Air Force Base closed in 1993, Mesa, Gilbert, Queen Creek and
eventually the Gila River Indian Community stepped in to oversee its reuse.
The four owners spent millions cleaning the airfield, building a passenger
terminal and cargo apron and rehabilitating runways to commercial
specifications. Mesa also reserved thousands of acres of land surrounding
the airport for business use.

It didn't take long for Ontario to realize an airport is more than
terminals, runways and business zoning. 

The city enjoyed some modest growth on its own but figured it needed muscle
and clout to get the place really humming. It found it in a partnership with
Los Angeles International Airport. 

Once the agreement was signed in 1967, it took only four years for passenger
volume to pass the 1 million mark. Seven years later, passenger traffic had
doubled. By 1990, the airport had attracted United Parcel Service's Western
cargo hub.

Williams Gateway has seen modest growth in the decade since it debuted as a
commercial airport. Enrollment is growing on the college campuses just west
of the runways. A few businesses have sprouted nearby to partner with the
colleges.

Several pilot-training schools are at the airport, creating enough air
traffic to make Williams Gateway the nation's 42nd-busiest airport last
year. 

The airport's first weekly flight to North Las Vegas debuted this year, and
Phoenix, the operator of Sky Harbor International Airport, now says it wants
to share some of its flight traffic with Williams Gateway.

But Williams Gateway still isn't living up to its owners' ambitious plans
because the airport is still missing daily flights. Without those, the
airport will never serve its planned 2 million passengers a year or create
100,000 jobs. 

Williams Gateway may never grow as large as Ontario because the Los Angeles
aviation market is bigger than Phoenix's. But there are three lessons to be
learned from Ontario's success:

   . Partner with a major airport.

   . Leave land near the airport open for business use.

   . Above all, know the area's demographics.

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