Airport hangar plans reviewed
Pennridge Airport isn’t planning to expand its runway, airport representatives said at a March 21 conditional use hearing before the East Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors.
“Do you ever intend to extend that runway?” asked East Rockhill’s solicitor Patrick Armstrong during the hearing for proposed additional hangars at the airport on Ridge Road.
“I’m not sure that it would be possible, and I’m sure it would not be economically feasible,” said Rob Brink, president of Pennridge Development Enterprises, the airport’s owner.
The airport now has three hangar buildings
with a combined 14 units and wants to build two more hangar buildings with a combined nine units, Brink and Keith Ottes, of Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, testified at the conditional use hearing. Existing flight patterns at the airport will not change, they said.
“The two buildings are proposed generally in the same area as the existing hangars,” Ottes said.
The airport currently has 21 outdoor tie-downs for planes, three of which would be kept and 18 removed or decommissioned when the additional hangars are built, Brink and Ottes said.
“The tie-downs, frankly, have been under-used,” Brink said. “I think that’s because people don’t really want to have their planes outside.”
One of the proposed new hangar buildings would be 32,000 square feet and the other 32,400 square feet, Ottes said. Although not yet fully designed, the hangar buildings are expected to be 29 feet tall, he said.
The major users of the airport are general aviation planes, a flight school, a skydiving company and corpo- rate planes, Brink said.
“I think anybody who knows anything about general aviation realizes that there are lots of airports that are closing these days. They’re closing because they don’t have enough business to run their operation,” he said. “These hangars will provide the service that Mr. Ottes explained, which is to store planes inside, but they’ll also give us the ability to increase our business.”
The proposed new hangars could have more than one plane in a unit, depending on the size of the planes, but are expected to have a maximum of two, he said.
There are currently about 40 planes, including three small jets, at the airport, he said.
Data supplied by a company that tracks flight plans showed a total of 887 takeoffs or landings in the past year at Pennridge Airport, Brink said. Those numbers are for flights coming to or leaving the airport and do not include flights that take off and return there the same day, such as the flight school, skydiving flights and Carson Helicopter’s use of the airport, he said.
If no flight plan was filed, it also would not be included in those totals, he said. All the jets would file flight plans, though, he said. The three jets currently at the airport accounted for less than 300 of the takeoffs and landings, he said.
“The vast majority of activity is between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.,” Brink said.
Some neighboring residents, though, said they hear jets taking off earlier than 8 a.m. more often than the reports show.
“I don’t doubt that you’re hearing something, but it’s not a jet taking off at our airport,” Brink said.
In answer to board member Gary Volovnik’s question of whether more jets are expected to use the airport if the hangars are built, Brink said there could be an increase.
“Typically, those are the people who would rent a hangar like this,” he said.
Volovnik also asked if Brink understood why the neighbors were at the hearing.
“If somebody was making a change of this magnitude near my house, I’d probably show up,” Brink said.
“Honestly, I don’t blame them for being concerned,” he said, “and I’m glad they’re here.”
If there are additional jets, the new ones would not be much larger than ones currently there, he said.
Prior to the start of the conditional use hearing, Armstrong said this hearing is for the use. Land development plans are reviewed separately, he said. The hangar plans are also separate from plans for a proposed business park at the airport, he said.
The Federal Aviation Agency and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Aviation will also have to approve the hangar plans, Ottes said.
The East Rockhill Township Planning Commission has reviewed the hangar plans and made recommendations for conditions to be placed on it if the conditional use is approved, officials said.
One change already made to the plans, as a result of a planning commission suggestion and meeting with Perkasie Fire Chief David Worthington, is the planned addition of an inside fire hydrant and plans to store foam at the airport that can be used in putting out fires, Brink said.
Brink said he is not aware of any plane accidents at the airport for which foam has been needed in the past.
The conditional use hearing will continue at the East Rockhill Township Board of Supervisors meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 18.
In answer to neighboring residents who said notification about the hearing should have been given to more of the neighboring properties, the board said the township more than met the requirements by sending out a notification to properties within 1,000 feet of the proposed hangars, but will now, instead, notify those within 500 feet of the airport property lines, which means more of the neighbors will receive a notification.
The April 18 meeting will include more data about when flight plans are and are not filed, jet take-off and landing numbers, noise studies previously done at the airport and response to a suggestion that takeoffs for jets using the hangars be limited to certain periods of the day, Robert Gundlach Jr., the airport’s attorney, said.