Officials eye ‘floating helipad,’ but councilor wants nothing ‘rinky-dink’
State officials are considering building a “floating helipad” near the Boston waterfront, in what experts say is a rare — but not necessarily novel — approach to fulfilling a vow to create a state-run landing spot for GE and others.
City and state officials promised a helipad in and around Boston as part of an incentiveladen package used to persuade General Electric to move its corporate headquarters to the Hub from Connecticut. Officials have stressed that any heliport is not exclusively for the corporate giant’s use, but for the public as a whole, though where it will go has remained unclear.
“There are some discussions now about the potential for a floating heliport and/or something further on down near the waterfront area that potentially could accommodate that,” City Councilor Michael Flaherty said on Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show yesterday. “I don’t want to see a floating helipad that is rinkydink. If we are going to do it, let’s be the envy of other folks around New England.”
Flaherty said that state officials have also explored putting a helipad in Dewey Square, near South Station.
MassDOT, which initially said it hoped to identify a site by September, remained mum yesterday.
“We do not have a site to report at this time for a public heliport in Boston,” spokeswoman Jacquelyn Goddard said.
Al Trenk, chairman of Air Pegasus, which runs a floating heliport on the Hudson River on Manhattan’s West Side, said there’s “not much difference” between one floating on a barge and one on land. He estimated that creating a “full-sized” floating heliport that could service four to five helicopters would cost anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million.
“You’d have to have lights and radio. You would have to have a facility where people would wait out of the weather, a terminal building. There’s a bunch of variables,” Trenk said. “But I would say on the low side, half a million (dollars).”
But plunking a helipad on water isn’t necessarily common, including in metropolitan areas. Brad Brandt, aviation director for the Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development, said there are more than 250 helipads his agency oversees and just one — situated in a rural bayou in the southwestern part of the state — is the only “true floating helipad.”
“It’s only accessible by boat,” said Brandt, who serves as vice president of the National Association of State Aviation Officials. “Within the association, it’s really not an issue that has come up in the past.”