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"Indiana airport officials want historic status overturned"

Friday, November 8, 2002

Airport officials want historic status overturned
The Henderson (KY) Gleaner


FORT WAYNE, Ind.- Airport officials have asked the state to set aside a
historic designation for one of Indiana's first airfields, arguing the
site is not truly historic, The News-Sentinel reported Thursday.

The Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority asked the Indiana
Department of Natural Resources to appoint an administrative law judge
to review the decision last month by state preservation officials.

The Indiana Historic Preservation Review Board voted Oct. 23 to add
Smith Field to state and national historic registers, the day after the
Fort Wayne City Council denied the same request.

The historic designation could complicate airport officials' plans to
close the 1920s airfield and sell the 236-acre property to developers.

Pilots and other Smith Field supporters argued that buildings like a
light tower built in 1927 and a hangar constructed in 1938 were
historically significant.

Airport attorney Thomas Logan, however, said in the petition that
notions of the airfield's historic significance were mistaken.

Logan wrote that a hump in the runways that some believe was intended to
help early aircraft come to a safe stop actually is a topographical
feature, and that a round hangar was a "failed marketing concept."

Smith Field, named after local aviation pioneer Art Smith, was the
city's first municipal airport. It is located on 250 acres of land about
5 miles north of downtown Fort Wayne.

The field is also the primary airport for planes diverted from Fort
Wayne International Airport.

The airport board asked that a judge either overturn or amend the
historic designation to exclude runways and taxiways.


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