Take a poor county. Strip-mine it. Now what? How about a freight airport, businesses and homes?
By JEAN HELLER
Published July 1, 2003
Where phosphate mining has left thousands of acres barren and useless, a St. Petersburg developer sees a large new airport, jobs and prosperity for one of the poorest regions in the state.
Douglas Brown has opened an office in Hardee County and hopes to build an $850-million cargo airport complex with business parks, light industry and housing developments.
In theory, it will bring new residents, thousands of jobs and a significantly expanded tax base.
The project, extending north into Polk County, would accommodate only cargo planes. They would fly to points across the globe carrying cattle to South America, or strawberries to Europe.
"Polk County strawberries will bring five times as much on the markets of Europe as they do here," said Brown, executive vice president of the Van Fleet International Airport Development Group.
"This is a community beat up by (the North American Free Trade Agreement)," he said. "Here's a chance to make money back under the same treaty, a chance to affect and improve the lives of everyone in this region."
While Hardee County officials hope the airport becomes reality, they maintain a healthy skepticism. This is, after all, the third attempt to build some sort of airport to bolster the economy of one of the state's poorest counties. The other two ideas, including one for a large passenger airport, are dead and buried, officials say.
But if the third proves a charm, it could change the fortunes of south-central Florida.
"We'd just as soon keep living the life of leaving apple pies cooling in open windows, without the inevitable consequences of growth," said Park Winter, Hardee County's director of economic development. "But in economic development, there is no status quo. You improve or die."
Brown and his partners acquired 23,000 acres of mined land in northwest Hardee and southwest Polk from IMC Global and IMC Phosphate in April. The partners also have options on an additional 20,000 acres from Cargill and CF Industries.
"It's hard to argue that the project has no chance when they have the options in hand," said Winter. "They've done more to advance this thing in the last year than anyone else did in the previous three."
The plan calls for an airport in western Hardee County, just south of the Polk line. The airport and 15,000-foot runway would be surrounded by commercial, light industrial and retail space, with housing developments to the east. The commercial, industrial and residential components would extend into Polk.
Brown, an energetic, intense 47-year-old, says he has been involved in housing and industrial development up and down the East Coast, from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Hilton Head, S.C. His group favors a cargo airport over a passenger airport because the economics are more favorable.
"An international passenger airport doesn't create the surrounding business that a cargo field does," he said.
But building an airport takes more than a bulldozer, a backhoe and good intentions. It takes money and a truckload of paperwork.
The Van Fleet group is not asking for any money from Hardee and Polk taxpayers. Eventually, it will seek Federal Aviation Administration grants to help build the airport and its tower, a common way to finance such a project.
The area's zoning is consistent with a commercial airport facility.
The developers eventually will ask that the two counties amend their comprehensive plans to include the airport. And they will ask the state to approve the airport as a free-trade zone, so that goods can be shipped through without the assessment of many duties and tariffs.
They are putting their own money up front for the preliminary studies, to build some infrastructure and to attract businesses.
"We currently have $250-million obligated from investors," Brown said, "and my partner and I put up the first million to do the DRI," a Development of Regional Impact study to gauge the effect of a large project on the area. While it is too early for commitments, Brown and his partner have talked to John Deere, Boeing, FedEx and agriculture interests about building facilities around the airport. CSX has rail lines into the area, Brown said.
Last February, Van Fleet filed with the FAA a request for an airspace study, an assessment of a new airport's impact on regional air traffic.
"We told them that such a study now was premature," said Christopher White, an FAA spokesman in Atlanta. "We've now received a summary of the proposal, which we're studying."
If FAA grant funds are to be used in airport construction, Van Fleet also will have to do a feasibility study to establish a need for the facility and a cost-benefit analysis. There also will be a site-selection study, which includes environmental impacts, and then the airspace study.
Although most of the project will be in Hardee, Polk officials also back it.
It is impossible to overstate the need for help for Hardee County.
Agriculture and phosphate mining drive the county. But according to the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research, Hardee lost nearly 11 percent of its farms between 1992 and 1997.
The phosphate deposits, south of the Polk County line, peter out in the southern part of the county, and when the deposits are gone, so is the industry. Already, the drag-line mining technique of scooping out vast quantities of earth have left tracts of northwest Hardee and southwest Polk useless for agriculture, Hardee's only alternative economy.
"We've been struggling to find some uses for our land after it's mined," said Bill Lambert, chairman of the Hardee County Commission. "There's not much hope for returning it to agriculture. There's not much use for a passenger airport. But a cargo airport here could work."
Asked if such a facility would impair Hardee's rural lifestyle or endanger its environment, Lambert said, "What can denigrate it any more than a drag line? It's been denigrated. We're trying to put it back together."
Not everyone supported the idea of building the world's first industrial airport when Ross Perot Jr. proposed it in Fort Worth, Texas, in the 1980s.
But the city annexed more than 5,600 acres for the project. Fort Worth Alliance Airport opened in 1989 and today is thriving and pumping millions of dollars into the city's economy.
It is not immediately clear whether such a facility in Hardee County would harm the large commercial airports in Tampa, Orlando and Miami.
"Since the terrorist attacks, airlines have been less interested in flying cargo in the bellies of passenger aircraft, so I don't think it would have a negative economic impact on us," said Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority.
"But we just built a new 110,000-square-foot facility for (FedEx)," he said. "And we've got Emery (Air Freight). And St. Petersburg-Clearwater (International Airport) has a huge facility for UPS. We wouldn't want to lose them."
While Brown makes lofty pronouncements, such as, "I'm in this for the gratification," he acknowledges that he and his partners will make money if the project succeeds.
"We'll make our money building to suit for the business and industry that will surround the airport," he said. "We will make money selling the residential properties to builders."
And if some people are skeptical, he understands.
"You mean some people don't trust a developer?" he said. "I'm shocked. But we're not asking anyone to trust us. That's why we're not asking the counties for anything. It's our risk, and everyone's gain. That would be okay, wouldn't it?"
