Mayson Foster likes to tell the story of visiting Hammond’s airport shortly after he took office as the city’s mayor in 2003. He went out to the approximately 1,000-acre facility with long-time Airport Authority board member Rico Masaracchia. As they sat on a bench near the tarmac, Foster asked, “What do you see?” “Mr. Rico looked around and said ‘I don’t see anything,’” Foster recalls. “And I said ‘Exactly! We’re an airport and we have no airplanes here.’ It was at that point that we said, “Hey, we really need to start working hard at this airport.”
Six years later, Foster lists the Hammond Northshore Regional Airport (HNRA) along with the renovation of Hammond Square and the rejuvenation of the downtown area, as a trio of top positives that are “putting Hammond on the map.”
While at the time of the mayor’s initial visit, the airport housed approximately 25 aircraft, today the airport’s director, Jason Ball, says around 140 aircraft are based at the facility, more than $5 million of improvement projects have upgraded runways and taxiways and the airport is home to both the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and an expansive multi-million dollar support facility for the Louisiana Army National Guard.
When Ball, a Loranger native and Louisiana Tech graduate in aviation management, took the job of HNRA director fresh out of college in 2005, he could not have predicted the major changes in store for the facility that has existed on Hammond’s eastern fringe since before World War II. “When I got here we had about 80 based aircraft and about 80 operations (take offs and landings) a day,” Ball said. “Most of our operations were flight training and U.S. Customs.”
Fast-forward to Hurricane Katrina. When Katrina and its sister storm Rita dealt south Louisiana a one-two punch, just four months after Ball took the helm, HNRA was one of the few facilities not knocked out of commission. High and dry north of I-12, the airport became a hub of activity for first-responders. “We had 6,000 military come through here, 750 operations a day,” said Ball. “It was at that time that people really started taking notice” of the airport’s potential, added Foster.
The airport had already seen some improvements. The Louisiana Air National Guard’s 236th squadron had been a long time tenant, while the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol had moved into the airport in 2003. A $2.2 million project had lengthened and strengthened its main runway – one of two -- from 5,000 to 6,500 feet to make it better able to handle larger aircraft.
But the Louisiana Army National Guard’s post-Katrina relocation to the airport was the main catalyst for the facility’s success. Today, the Guard’s 204th and 244th squadrons occupy a 56-acre campus that includes a readiness center, vehicle-maintenance building, fitness center and hangars. The $122 million complex for approximately 80 permanent personnel and more than 300 troops who drill monthly at the facility is “a great economic boon to our city,” Foster said.
In addition to the economic trickle-down that the troops provide by shopping, eating and lodging in the city, and the jobs provided to area contractors and architects by the complex’s construction, the airport gets 10 cents per gallon of fuel consumed by aircraft at the airport -- and the National Guard’s 15 helicopters are burning an estimated 70,000 gallons per year, Ball said. “If we’ve done this much in the last five years, I can’t wait to see the next five,” he said.
One project that should definitely come to fruition in the near future is a crucial ingredient in ensuring airport safety – a control tower. According to Foster, plans for a control tower could be finalized as early as the end of the year, thanks again to the National Guard.
“Normally, a control tower is paid for by the Federal Aviation Administration, which funds 95 percent of the HNRA’s capital outlay budget with a five percent match from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development’s Division of Aviation,” Foster said. “But they have done a preliminary study of our airport and have determined that even though the flight takeoffs and landings have increased significantly in the last few years, it does not yet qualify in terms of numbers for a control tower that’s supported by FAA.”
With funding from the FAA not an option at present, Foster and Ball have been meeting with the National Guard and DOTD to hammer out a way to finance a control tower. “The military is extremely concerned about the mix of aircraft coming in,” Foster said. The airport, he pointed out, services aircraft, “from a Gulfstream 5 jet to helicopters -- and everything in between. When you have G5s flying in next to a National Guard helicopter, you have issue of safety – and everyone agrees that’s the most important thing.”
“We’re trying to work a deal with all partners to develop a plan for a control tower that could handle civilian and military traffic from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or somewhere in that vicinity,” Foster said. The National Guard, he said, would fund one of the major expenses of the control tower: personnel.
“My guess is that one control tower person would probably be in the $70-100,000 salary range when you include all the benefits involved,” Foster said. With the estimated need for at least six controllers, “We just could not do it,” he said, pointing out that the recurring expense of a $150,000 salary had already killed an earlier plan to make the Hammond Northshore Regional Airport a port-of-entry facility for international flights.
If the National Guard can provide the personnel, Foster said, “The city could probably provide the control tower structure. The DOTD Division of Aviation has indicated it could probably help with some of the other infrastructure improvements, while we would handle some of the ongoing maintenance. It would be a military-city-state project.”
“Now that we have the cooperation of the military, state and city, we need to move forward now,” Foster said. “We’re hoping to have approval by the end of the year.” The approval, he added, has to come from the National Guard Bureau, which approves the budget for the Louisiana National Guard, the DOTD Aviation Division and the city. “If any one link is not complete, it won’t work,” he said.
Foster estimates that the price tag would include $500,000-750,000 for tower construction, $300,000 from the state for infrastructure improvements and, from the National Guard, $600,000-$1 million in personnel costs and $2 million in equipment.
In return for its considerable contributions, the National Guard would gain not only the safety considerations it desires, but also a tower for training military personnel.
“And lastly, the Guard hasto be prepared,” Foster said. “This is so important now in case of a catastrophe, whether it is a hurricane or another terrorism problem. The National Guard is the one called. It spent $122 million at HNRA to be prepared. In the overall scheme of things this is not very expensive for it to reach its mission of being prepared to respond.”
While a control tower is crucial to day-to-day progress and growth at the HNRA, Ball is also looking ahead to a special event – the Super Bowl’s return to New Orleans in 2013, when he said, the city can expect to see big corporate jets wanting space to land.
“My forecast is that by 2013 we should have enough infrastructure improvements to handle just about anything they can throw at us,” he said.
The airport’s five-year capital improvement plan, recently submitted to DOTD’s Division of Aviation which coordinates funding, maps out $6 million worth of projects including rehabilitating existing taxiways, acquiring more land, new high tech navigation aids and constructing a new taxiway parallel to the main runway.
“I’m very proud of where we are – I can’t wait to see where we go in the future,” said Ball.