Businesses that operate out of Burke Lakefront Airport pushed back again last week on Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s belief that the city will be just fine without the Lake Erie aerodrome. 

At a media event to highlight Burke’s benefits last Wednesday, the airport’s supporters pointed to organ transplant flights, the Cleveland National Air Show and the potential for developing new aviation technology. They cast the airport’s fate in existential terms. 

“We are about to make an irreversible mistake that will harm this city for generations to come,” said George Katsikas, CEO of charter flight company Aitheras Aviation Group. “Burke Lakefront does not sit in front of the progress and future of this city.”

A staffer from the North Coast Waterfront Development Corp., which supports Burke’s closure, sat in the room, taking notes.

North Coast and Cleveland City Hall had just scored a public relations coup. They released a study that morning imagining a Burke and the nearby area transformed into soccer fields, a fieldhouse, camping space, hotels and maybe even a golf course. 

Redeveloping Burke would cost $608 million to $689 million but would generate $715 million to $810 million in economic impact, the study said. The study pegged the redevelopment’s annual direct contribution to Cleveland’s economy at $21 million to $22 million. 

That’s a bit less than the $31.5 million in direct economic activity that could leave Cleveland proper if Burke closed, a 2024 study said. 

Jessica Trivisonno, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff, offered a caveat to that negative $31.5 million figure. It’s based on the assumption that the air show would leave town, and City Hall wants to find a way to keep it, she said. (Kim Dell, the air show’s executive director, said at last week’s event that the show wouldn’t work without Burke.)

The study found that a redeveloped Burke would bring in more tax revenue, Trivisonno said. And she cited an intangible of her own. 

“Giving residents access to that lakefront shoreline, to 450 acres of publicly owned land, is, I think, a good,” Trivisonno said. 

Cleveland hasn’t shared firm details on how it would pay the more than half-billion-dollar cost of redeveloping the airport. Scott Skinner, North Coast’s executive director, said private financing could be part of the picture.

The point of this study was to get people thinking and talking about what could replace Burke, he said.

“This is not a master plan,” Skinner said. “It’s not a formal plan that’s being adopted by the city. This is a conceptual fit study to identify what potential uses could go on the site.”

Lobbying the federal government on Burke

The ultimate judgment on closing Burke could be rendered by Congress or the Federal Aviation Administration. Both sides of the argument are lobbying.

Opponents of closing Burke met recently with the staffs of U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted, Kyle Lewis of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association told reporters last Wednesday.

“I don’t think they were ready to commit to anything until they saw that comprehensive plan,” Lewis said, “and I’m not sure a pretty drawing in a newspaper is going to do that.”

The Bibb administration is making its case, too — and it has some help. Last October, Bibb said Browns owner Jimmy Haslam had been “helpful” in discussing Burke with Ohio’s two senators.

Trivisonno said city officials plan to go to Washington, D.C. in April to meet with the FAA.