No tenants biggest hurdle for Homestead

By CRAIG PITTMAN and JEAN HELLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 14, 2001

For seven years, the backers of a proposed commercial airport next door to Everglades National Park have boasted their development would bring 38,000 jobs to the Homestead area.

Yet so far Homestead Air Base Developers Inc., the company with an exclusive Miami-Dade County lease to build the airport, has not signed up the first tenant. Airline officials are not exactly champing at the bit to get into Homestead, raising questions about whether the developers can really deliver 38,000 jobs.

Ramon Rasco, attorney for the developers, blamed the lack of action on the lengthy delay created by opposition to the airport from environmental groups.

"We can't do anything yet," he said. "We do not want to be in the position of signing a lease where the commencement date is uncertain."

If the Air Force approves handing Homestead Air Reserve Base over to Miami-Dade County this week, then Homestead Air Base Developers will start recruiting tenants in a year or two, Rasco said.

But recruiting tenants for an airport 25 miles south of the connecting flights and shipping facilities of Miami International Airport will be nearly impossible, airport opponents predict.

"Neither cargo carriers nor the major airlines wish to go to Homestead," said Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson, whose district includes Homestead. "Homestead is really far away. It's not a seamless connection."

One airline Rasco suggested the developers might target is JetBlue. Like the nation's premier low-fare carrier, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue serves its markets through remote locations, which would seem a perfect fit for Homestead.

But JetBlue spokesman Gareth Edmondson-Jones said: "Are we opposed to a new airport? No. Are we interested? No."

By the end of January, JetBlue and Southwest will have extensive service to West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, with ground transportation available to Miami International. No need to add Homestead to the mix, too, Edmondson-Jones said.

"We serve the greater Miami area through those two cities," he said. "I'd say we have it covered."

Southwest was less dismissive but far from encouraging.

"We get more than 100 requests for service a year," said spokeswoman Christine Turneabe-Connelly. "If they decided to build a new airport and came to us, we would consider their request among all the others."

The dominant carrier at Miami International is American Airlines, which would have little to gain in moving to a remote site. Rasco said the developers hope to convince American to dispatch some of its Caribbean-bound flights from Homestead. The company was less than enthusiastic.

"Whether they develop a new airport is for governments to decide," American spokeswoman Martha Pantin said. "It has nothing to do with us."

Miami International -- which county officials say is at least 10 years away from needing relief from another airport -- is undergoing a $5.4-billion expansion that has created 6,000 jobs.

As part of that expansion, the carriers at MIA are building their own buildings, which they will own for 25 years. Homestead Air Base Developers would have better luck wooing carriers not flying into Miami, although it would have to convince them that passengers would use a carrier so far from their final destination.

"Before an airline goes into a market, they do extensive research on a lot of fronts, but the No. 1 driver is whether there will be customers," said Diana Cronin of Air Transport Association, the industry group that represents major airlines. "The bottom line is always passengers, and if the airport is remote, the passengers might not come."

Former Miami International director Rick Elder puts it this way: "Imagine for a minute you're in charge of a major air carrier, and I tell you that I'll give you a dollar-a-year rent if you'll move to Homestead. But all your competitors will be at MIA."

So any Homestead carrier would have to bus passengers north to connecting flights. "Hell, no, they're not going to do that," Elder said.

Cargo operations face a similar problem. Half the cargo coming into Miami International arrives in the bellies of passenger planes, Elder said, and the timing of transferring that cargo is so crucial that MIA built a road beneath a runway to avoid driving trucks around it. If driving around a runway took too long, he said, the delay involved in trucking a shipment from Homestead would be less desirable.

Even all-cargo operations such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service could experience problems operating from a site as remote as Homestead, aviation experts say. A shipment of Chilean artichokes bound for London, for instance, would present serious logistical problems. The produce would have to be transferred to Miami, which could take so long it might endanger the product.

Rasco said Homestead Air Base Developers probably would not attempt to attract a carrier of perishable cargo and instead would go after shippers of the kind of products sold on Amazon.com -- books and computers, for instance -- although it has lost out on one major tenant.

"FedEx wanted to locate in Homestead four years ago," Rasco said. "But when things started taking so much time, they built at MIA instead."

Recent coverage

Airport idea does not fly (December 23, 2000)

Strange bedfellows join against airport (October 9, 2000)

Valuable Everglades effort (October 4, 2000)

Senate okays Everglades bill; tough House vote next (September 26, 2000)

Homestead airport plan stirs up protest (August 2, 2000)

Support for Homestead airport erodes (January 9, 2000)

Environment, economy clash in South Florida (August 15, 1999)

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