Two Studies Lean Towards Recommendation for Cleveland to Close the Burke Lakefront Airport

The 450 acres of land that have occupied a large swath of Downtown Cleveland’s lakefront have served several purposes for the past century.

It’s been the host of the Cleveland Municipal Dump, a recipient of the city’s trash and scrap glass and metal. It’s been a Cold War-era Nike Missile site, where anti-aircraft missiles were tested during the 1950s and 1960s.

And, since opened to the public in 1947, that land’s been occupied by its most noted tenant: the Burke Lakefront Airport, which has seen continuous declines in air traffic and increased calls for its closure in recent years.

Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration just released two pivotal studies done for the city on Monday detailing the myriad pros and cons that would come if Burke was closed sometime in the next two decades. Though shuttering the small airstrip would likely cost the city tens of millions in what could be multi-year legal battle, the studies, which are years in the making, seem to present Burke being redeveloped as the better bet.

Especially if, as goes many Clevelanders’ dreams for a neighborhood (or stadium, or Blossom 2.0) on Lake Erie, that development hits the near ideal: an annual economic benefit of $92 million, one of the reports suggested.

The first study, entitled “Valuing Burke Lakefront Airport,” contends some $20 million more than planes still taking off and landing there.

“The closure of Burke would permit investment that would ultimately have greater economic activity,” that report read, “than currently occurring at the airport.”

Such a takeaway has been used by both City Council and the Mayor’s Office as a soft green light for a possible decision to come—to actually go ahead and tell the Federal Aviation Administration, who has the final say, that Burke’s days are numbered.

And transforming it “into a space that better serves our community,” as Bibb wrote in a press release on Monday. These “findings have reinforced my long-held belief that closing Burke is both possible and economically advantageous for Cleveland.”

The same goes for Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack, who has long bemoaned the paltry portion of Lake Erie available as public land, and whose ward occupies Burke’s acreage.

“While there is no doubt that much due diligence will be needed, I believe our residents deserve meaningful access to high quality public space on our lakeshore,” McCormack wrote. “Connecting all of our people to our most precious resources will always be the right thing to do.”

Due diligence may be the lightest way of putting it.

According to both reports, which stretch back to relationships with two separate consultants in 2022, shutting down Burke could entail everything from a mere piece of federal legislation in U.S. Congress to years of legal headaches and a noticeable dent in the city’s General Fund.

Legally speaking, as per the rules of the FAA, the city would have to pay tens of millions in annual maintenance costs—runway repairs, to keeping plane firetrucks running—themselves, as money from the Feds would no longer be available. And, like with Chicago’s own (successful) attempt in 2003 to shut down Meigs Field Airport, a small pile of legal fees. ($500,000 in Chicago’s case.)

But ending Burke’s service could mean greener pastures in the next few decades, especially in tandem with Bedrock’s $2 billion riverfront development, Bibb’s North Coast plan and the Metroparks’ CHEERS project just east of Burke. It’s such pastures—that is, converting Burke into a neighborhood or just park or some combination of the two—that the city could use to prove to the FAA closing the airport down is in the best interest of the city, the state and the country.

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Manny Wallace

One sure upset by the closing of Burke: no more Blue Angels on the lakefront.

It could lead to a 170-acre public park—”among the largest urban parks in Cleveland”—to playing fields, an “indoor sports facility,” a boutique hotel, five to six restaurants and some 12,000 units of housing. That is, as the lore around Burke becomes reality, if developers can build atop years of accumulated river dredge and, in some spots, 30 feet of trash and sediment. (And deal with potential methane gas.)

Yet, an attempt to expand Downtown rather than try and boost Burke—a failing airport that, one report finds, loses on average $1 million a year—wouldn’t make a gargantuan mark in the region’s private and medical air industry as some imagine. The roughly 37,000 Boeing 737s and Airbus 319 jets that carry organs destined for the Cleveland Clinic or visiting NBA players could be assumed by the six nearby airports, if, the report affirms, new hangar space was made available.

“The proximity of other airports and the high percentage of non-airport related businesses at Burke,” one study explains, “are why there is relatively low true loss of economic activity.”

Except for an unavoidable truism if Burke is shut down: the sure end of the Cleveland National Air Show and the Blue Angels’ weekend in September. Burke, both reports conclude, is just too ideal—in location and wiggle room—for the takeoff of those six Navy jets.

Which make for a good metaphor for Bibb’s decision at hand: complicated.

A list of pros and cons that “underscore the need for further detailed study and careful consideration of the site’s conditions,” one report concludes, “before any construction project is undertaken.”