To:

City and County Commissioners

From:

Bob Rackleff

Subject:

Economic growth and Tallahassee Regional Airport

We should explore developing at the Tallahassee Regional Airport an inter-modal freight hub and commercial, office and light industrial parks, closely linked to Innovation Park. Many other communities our size (such as Fort Myers) have created such economic centers next to their airports – creating hundreds of well-paying private-sector jobs. It is an opportunity we have neglected. With the exception of a few and notable aviation-related businesses, the sole economic activity at our airport today is a passenger terminal.

Tapping this potential could involve these projects:

Develop one or more industrial/commercial parks south and west of the airport in what is now the Apalachicola National Forest. This would require us to explore land swaps with the U.S. Forest Service.

Complete the widening of the Capital Circle Parkway, especially where it would provide an un-congested freight trucking link to I-10. As suggested by Blueprint 2000, the southwest leg would be re-routed north of Lake Bradford both to protect the lake’s water quality and to provide direct access to Innovation Park.

Explore the re-routing of the CSX rail line from its current downtown route to one south of Capital Circle, providing rail frontage to the airport’s future commercial and light industrial parks. Also, this would eliminate safety hazards from potential spills and explosions by freight trains moving through densely-populated areas – as well as improve CSX delivery speeds as it competes with the truck industry.

Many practical problems could prevent any of this from happening. The Capital Circle Parkway is an expensive undertaking. The sites south and west of the airport may be environmentally fragile or simply not available for swaps. Re-routing of the rail line may be too expensive or ruled impractical by CSX.

However, TEA-21 provides grants for such projects and could be a source of funding. We could approach the Florida DOT and its Freight Stakeholders Task Force for technical assistance. As a landowner and developer, St. Joe Co. could also participate.

As a first step, we should ask the Chamber’s Economic Development Council to organize a public-private task force to explore this idea.