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A Times Editorial
The costs and environmental risks of Albert Whitted's expansion plans raise new questions about whether the airport belongs in downtown St. Petersburg.
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 7, 2001
Along St. Petersburg's picturesque public downtown waterfront, a tiny airport built in a different era serves to this day as a private blockade. Anyone trying to fashion those 117 waterfront acres into something that will serve the city's growing needs in the new millennium will incur the wrath of 175 highly motivated pilots who call the Albert Whitted Municipal Airport home.
That stifling sense of self-entitlement is probably responsible for the latest Albert Whitted insult. Airport consultants are now calling on taxpayers to spend $35-million to expand the landing strip, and to pour dirt into Tampa Bay to do so. This time, however, the pilots may just have pushed too far. This time, a mayor, some City Council members and a growing list of neighborhood leaders are saying that enough is enough.
Kai Warren, president of the Historic Roser Park Neighborhood Association: "I think during the next year as we discuss it, you'll see this romantic attachment to the airport. But it really is a waste when you think of the possibilities toward assisting revitalization on the south side."
Council of Neighborhood Associations president Jimmy Biggerstaff: "As president of CONA, I would rather see $35-million dollars of tax money spent on a park on this land and a mall in the Challenge area than filling in the bay for a larger runway."
Mayor Rick Baker: "I think the airport has been an economic driver in the past, but we're in a stage now where we're evaluating new things and it may be time to look at the whole picture."
Indeed, the city's downtown has undergone remarkable change in recent years, with the construction of a baseball dome, new office towers, condominiums, townhomes and the entertainment plaza BayWalk. Business and commercial interests are looking to invest in St. Petersburg, and the demand for housing in and surrounding downtown is rapidly growing. The Bayfront Medical Center/All Children's Hospital complex continues to expand, and the University of South Florida's St. Petersburg campus has been given new authority to grow to meet the educational needs of Pinellas County.
In these modern times, the Whitted airport has few reasons to exist. It provides no commercial travel. Tampa International Airport and St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport are little more than 10 miles away. The flights in and out of the airport hover over neighborhoods, and the east-west landing strip ends almost at the doorstep of the USF student activities center. In recent years, a pilot splashed down into Tampa Bay less than 100 yards from The Pier, and another pilot and passenger were killed when their plane crashed into a vacant house about a mile from the airport. Even airport officials acknowledge the hazards posed by their co-existence with downtown buildings; the airport expansion plans call first for a safety buffer.
The reality is that the airport is a quaint convenience for the few private pilots who use it, and the greater community's needs are never considered when it comes to the use of that land. Just look at the current expansion plan. The airport director paid an airport consultant $157,000 to "update the master plan," and the recommendations were shared with a "technical advisory committee" that included 15 people with direct ties to the airport. Is anyone surprised by the result?
Baker, who promised to bring a bold and visionary approach to the mayor's office, has called for a "community discussion" about Albert Whitted, and such discourse is long overdue. Nearly eight decades after this waterfront land was turned over to the pilots, the taxpaying public deserves a chance to be heard.