A dogfight in McKinney over airport

Some say facility propels growth; to others, it's simply a drag
 

03:53 AM CST on Friday, February 27, 2004

By ROY APPLETON and PAULA LAVIGNE / The Dallas Morning News

 

McKinney – Collin County Regional Airport is about planes and taxpayer subsidies, about harvesting tax dollars and spurring development. It's also about people – from confident investors banking on the airport's future to disgusted neighbors fighting its noise and growth. McKinney's airport lies at the end of Industrial Boulevard, where metal hangars rise above a concrete and asphalt plain. Stand outside the terminal building. Look around.

To the east, a patch of city-owned dirt awaits a proposed new runway. Some investors' property snuggles nearby. To the west, City Council member Pete Huff and 29 others own a hangar complex on airport land. Mr. Huff votes on airport business unrelated to the hangars. Further west stands Encore Wire. The company's twin-engine turboprop was among 19 airport business planes that together generated $430,046 in property taxes last year.

On toward downtown are the older neighborhoods of east McKinney. Resident Olympia Ugarte says the airport is like a sponge, sucking away city dollars that could upgrade basic services. Street and drainage improvements have come to the east side in recent years, but "until the last street gets fixed, there's going to be a problem," she says. South of the terminal, McKinney Aerospace outfits high-end aircraft, and Texas Instruments hangars its two $40 million Global Express jets. John Powell lives about a half-mile south of the runway. The Fairview resident has watched the airport grow since its opening. "They told us they could control the patterns and there wouldn't be planes flying low over homes," he says. "We were lied to."

Control of airport operations and neighboring development starts with four men inside the terminal building. Directing the city's aviation department is Ken Wiegand, upbeat and confident. "If managed right," he says, airports "can bring home the bacon." Walk through the lobby to the aircraft service desk. Upstairs find the runway overlooks of George Schuler, Mark David and Robbie Clark. Partners in two airport firms, they like an active runway. "This is an ideal location for an airport," says Mr. Schuler, who has been providing aircraft services and land-dealing around the airport since 1980. "It's planned for industrial development ... and there's no residences close."

Mr. Schuler came from Montana in 1969 to manage the Plano Chamber of Commerce and three years later was investing in real estate, building car washes and publishing telephone directories. He remembers flying over the unfinished airport and later contacting the city about building a hangar there for his plane. "One thing led to another," Mr. Schuler recalls, and he was running the place. He created McKinney Airport Properties Inc., which today leases most of the airport's developed land and, as WingsPoint Aviation, provides all aircraft fuel and maintenance. His McKinney Aviation I owns all airport structures built before 2002. For years, his now-dormant McKinney Airport Partners sold, leased and optioned land to the city for airport expansion. The Plano resident has spent and committed "easily more than 20 million dollars" at the airport over the years, he says, but "never taken a dime" out of the investment.

A land investor and deal-maker beyond McKinney, Mr. Schuler struggled through the banking and real estate tailspins of the 1980s, and through the downturns and rising costs that slowed aviation.  He has soared, buying control, for example, of an Elk City, Okla., savings and loan. And he has tumbled, riding his McKinney Airport Partners through bankruptcy and pleading guilty to involvement in a loan that he says sunk his Heritage Savings and Loan.

While Mr. Schuler received three years' probation in 1995, a co-defendant was cleared on appeal.  "I'm beat up and bloodied, but unbowed," he says. At age 59, Mr. Schuler is also tenacious and passionate about the airport. "I feel like I go to play every day because I love being around airplanes," he says. But almost three years ago – raising money to buy land near the airport – he shared the fun and risk.

Mr. David, a McKinney developer and investor, and Mr. Clark, a lifelong McKinney resident, bought a majority stake in Mr. Schuler's airport land leases and aviation services operation. The trio's Tres Airport Partners is nearing an agreement with the city to help develop airport property. The deal would release Mr. Schuler's grip on future airport leases and repay the partners for up to $1.25 million in airport improvements.

"Our intent is to wean one developer away from having so much control over the airport," says Mr. Wiegand, the airport director. "We'd like to get some different faces in here and stir it up a little."

Mr. Schuler, Mr. David and two partners are also planning to develop land around the airport after helping the city enlarge it. Almost three years ago, their McKinney Horizons LP bought 788 acres and sold 217 of them to the city. Before Horizons stepped in, the city faced a choice: all 788 acres or nothing. "It was a lot more than we could bite off ourselves," says Regie Neff, assistant city manager.

Mr. David, a cerebral cruise to Mr. Schuler's overdrive, holds the managing stake in Horizons. Ross Perot and his son, Ross Jr., ventured around the McKinney airport land as well. But while the Perots moved on, these latest investors say they have "patient money."

"It may well be a 15- to 20-year investment," says Mr. David, who five years ago left the split-second world of options trading, selling the London-based company he had started from scratch.

The 49-year-old McKinney resident, a former Dallas corporate lawyer, says his vision for the area includes an industrial park, with perhaps a hotel and restaurant, around an airport alive with business jets. This venture, he says, is about being at the center of a flow, "like at the narrow part of the funnel."

If Mr. David and Mr. Schuler are among the airport's power forwards, Cynthia Kaminsky is one of the opposition's point guards.

"This is what we wake up to every Saturday morning," she says of the aircraft droning overhead. "They sometimes come every three minutes or three every minute."

These training flights make up about three-fourths of the airport's traffic and come mostly from Addison Airport, which restricts such activity.

Airport literature asks pilots to respect "noise sensitive areas." Those areas include most of Fairview, whose residents and others have long complained about low-flying, noisy aircraft. Mr. Wiegand says he is sympathetic to the concerns, but planes outside restricted airspace and above regulated minimum altitudes "can fly where they want," he says.

Ms. Kaminsky and her neighbor, Don Keathly, are dubious. "They don't care," Mr. Keathly says, especially when every touchdown and liftoff adds to the airport's traffic count, which in turn supports funding and expansion. Control the trainers and "a lot of the complaints about the airport would go away," says Ms. Kaminsky, who isn't going away.  An engineer by training, she presses city, state and federal officials to address residents' airport concerns. With an analyst's rigor and a problem-solver's drive, she challenges airport planning, growth and what she and others say is McKinney's impudence toward anyone who would complain about their baby. "You can't just do as you want and say these people don't matter," she says.

Ms. Kaminsky and her husband, transplants from Illinois, built a house in the wooded Briar Trail neighborhood in 1986. Since then, she has become one of the airport's leading challengers, for a time as a consultant for Fairview and now in a network that has numbered up to about 30 people. She and Mr. Keathly, for example, have tried to block the airport's federal funding.  In his latest complaint, Mr. Keathly alleges in part that the city is ignoring airport complaints and not controlling birds that threaten aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration will review the allegations.

The two are also participating in a public review of the airport master plan, and twice a respectful Ms. Kaminsky has been told to withhold questions or be removed from meetings. And they are offering ideas for airport-area growth.  Current planning calls for more than 6,000 acres of industrial zoning from the airport into areas targeted for annexation, including Ms. Kaminsky's neighborhood.  But skeptical of the city's good will and concerned about their property values, the neighbors are suggesting a more diverse mix of uses – office, residential and parks – which they say would top the tax return of industry alone.  "We don't want to close the airport," Ms. Kaminsky says.

Mention aircraft noise, and airport supporters typically say that anyone who moves near a runway has little room to complain. "They choose to live there, and they choose to live with the noise," Mr. Wiegand says.  Supporters talk of trying to be a "good neighbor" to those under flight paths, just as they sometimes wave off complaints as the carping of an unfortunate few who don't pay McKinney taxes anyway. They also talk about a greater good and how the benefits to many taxpayers outweigh some scattered disruptions.

Fairview doesn't agree. Lying south of the runway, the town of about 3,500 people is older than the airport and has confronted its noise and growth plans for more than a decade.  The town has sued to block airport construction and unsuccessfully filed bird safety complaints similar to Mr. Keathly's. And, hoping to control airport growth, Fairview is demanding that the city unequivocally commit to operating only one runway.  Planners say the airport won't need two runways for at least 20 years. But the city won't make guarantees or limit planning that is pointing toward a new 8,000-foot landing strip.

"Somebody's being fooled," says John Powell, "if they believe there's only going to be one runway."  In his 64 years, the Fairview resident has seen the Perots come and go. He has watched the city upgrade the airport and its Industrial Boulevard entryway while East McKinney neighborhoods awaited street and drainage improvements. If the airport is the city's hope for the future, Mr. Powell says, so far it has been a playland and payland for a select few. "What you've got is government agencies building something for private investors," he says.

Disturbing to some are council member Pete Huff's votes on airport business, when he stands to gain financially, they say, from airport growth. Mr. Huff says his two hangars, in the McKinney Hangar Owners Association complex, produce no income and won't necessarily benefit if the airport thrives. He abstains from issues within 200 feet of association property; otherwise, he and City Attorney Mark Houser say, there's no conflict.

Airport foes have also questioned votes by former council member Brad Wysong, who owns about 240 acres of land more than a mile southeast of the airport. No conflict, Mr. Houser says. Mr. Schuler and his partners reject assertions that they are riding the public's airport investment like a parasite.  "I don't know why they think that," says Mr. Schuler. He and his partners, not the city, have taken on the risk through the years to help the airport grow, he says. And these days, "we're the ones putting money up for taxpayers' gain."  Besides, "there's no goldmine at the airport," says Mr. Schuler, who has no plan to move on.

"The story is, it can only get better. A lot better," he says. "It had better."

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