The runway at the Wiarton Keppel International Airport. (image from The Loomex Group report)
Georgian Bluffs will be accepting offers to purchase the Wiarton Keppel International Airport and its lands until Oct. 14.
Township council accepted a report on the airport sale for information at its meeting on Wednesday and officially approved a bylaw to allow the sale process to move ahead. The airport will continue to operate normally during the sale period.
Georgian Bluffs council declared the airport surplus in September, just over six years after it purchased the property and its facilities from South Bruce Peninsula for $600,000.
The Wiarton Keppel International Airport is located on Grey Road 1, between Oxenden and Wiarton.
The township’s director of finance Kassandra Rocca provided a financial overview of Georgian Bluffs’ investments in the airport since 2015 at Wednesday’s council meeting.
She says Georgian Bluffs has spent about $2.4-million of taxpayer funds to pay for operating and capital expenses at the airport since the township took over ownership of it.
And in the next five years, millions more in taxpayer dollars will need to be spent.
Rocca says selling the airport would result in at least $8.7-million in cost savings for the township over the next five years, mostly due to an estimated $6-million capital investment required to replace the runway and the runway lights.
“When we purchased the airport in 2015 we were aware capital upgrades would be needed to the runway,” Rocca told township councillors. “Other than doing some crack sealing and patching, we have not really put any sort of investments in the runway since we’ve owned it.”
Georgian Bluffs clerk and interim Chief Administrative Officer Brittany Drury says council has not established parameters for the sale of the airport, therefore any and all offers to purchase it are being accepted until Oct. 14.
“Essentially, investors or potential buyers have carte blanche as to the offers they submit,” Rocca explains. “Council will have the opportunity to review those offers as a collective body upon receipt.”
Drury says if council is not satisfied with the offers it receives it could choose to extend the deadline for submissions or retain the airport as a township-owned asset.
A public meeting to allow for comment on the proposed Wiarton Keppel International Airport sale was held Wednesday as well.
Laura McNamara, who identified herself as a retired emergency room physician and former family physician, says the airport plays a vital role in rural healthcare delivery, allowing the local system to access Ornge paramedics and air ambulance.
“The value this brings in achieving better health outcomes for people needs to be noted,” she says. “But it won’t be seen on your accounting spreadsheet.”
Another speaker at the public meeting, Brian Reis identified himself as a former employee of the aviation weather station at Wiarton airport. He raised concerns about the major investments various federal government agencies currently have at the airport, including a 24/7 manned weather station that supplies weather data to Environment Canada and Nav Canada.
He says a room in the terminal building also includes rows of high-tech radio equipment that covers communications between operators at the Toronto-area control centre at Pearson International Airport and hundreds of commercial, military and private flights per day that travel through the Wiarton sector of the air travel corridor.
Reis says radio repeater equipment and a tower for Canadian Coast Guard Sarnia is also situated on Wiarton Keppel Airport property. It is monitored 24/7 for distress calls, as well as normal radio traffic for commercial and recreational vessels in a section of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.
“In the event this property sells or is closed down as an operating airport, none of this equipment can be just unplugged and moved down the street and plugged in again,” Reis says. “It’s extremely important for aviation and marine safety that this equipment is available 24/7, 365 days a year. In other words, another complete system would have to be operational first so if the Wiarton system is taken down, the new system can take over immediately.”
Ann Dumyn, who identifed herself as a Shallow Lake resident, supported council’s position to consider a sale of the airport.
Three other people, including a flight captain with the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association, spoke against the potential airport sale during the public meeting.
The Wiarton Keppel International Airport is one of two municipally-owned airports in the area that have gone up for sale recently. Owen Sound city council officially declared the Billy Bishop Regional Airport — located on Highway 26 in Meaford — as surplus in September to allow it to be put on the market.