A much-need electrical utility center may soon replace a beloved private airport near Seattle and the pilot and local utilities manager who helped make the call says there's just no better option. Mark Flury, himself a private pilot, told the Seattle Times he well understands the turmoil the closure of First Air Field in Monroe, Washington will cause but the 36-acre parcel really is a great spot to centralize the Snohomish County Public Utility Districted electrical distribution center. Geoffrey Monroe, the city's mayor, a pilot and hangar owner at First Air, disagrees but there's not much he or his council can do about it.
Buy an electric plane and you contribute to losing airports for electrical utility centers. Classic. /sarc
I’m sorry but this is really bad planning on the part of the mayor and the utility district. They should have been planning for over a decade or two in finding land and planning utility stations. Waiting till now and then saying “oh, here is the last clear area left, we have to use it” is just obscenely bad city government.
Many questions including why the facility is not further out of town. It seems to be just offices and garages for utility’s vehicles, not anything like a transformer station.
What is the future of the fairgrounds?
Is there an airfield closer to Stephens Pass? (IIRC the town of Sultan is out that way, its old section behind dikes.
(Too far east is a strip used by helicopters, I forget if it is long enough for small airplanes - probably surrounded by trees.)
Crazy side story of people drawing lines on maps without looking at lay of land.
The heliport near Skykomish is legally in a far corner of King Country, all roads to it go through Snohomish County.
(I don’t know if the heliport is active - decades since I was in Skykomish, nor who uses it - hopefully for emergencies in the pass helicopters can land at the downhill ski resort. which should have its own helipad.)
This was a privately held airport, and like everything else in life that’s for sale, it went to the purchaser with the largest wallet. I suspect the city coffers did not contain a spare $7M, otherwise an administration friendly to the airport likely would have purchased the field, applied for federal funding and kept it going.
Ah, thanks for the info Daniel; I thought it was a city owned airport. My mistake. It’s too bad that we lose so many of these smaller airports these days. If nothing else there is one less emergency field for all the other traffic in the area.
It’s a shame to lose any airport. I did a Google search. We’ve lost almost 7000 since 1990. How many new airports have been built in that time frame?