Senior Aviation Planner for CHA, a consultant on the plan, Robert LaFayette explains aspects of the Regional Airport Sustainable Master Plan at an open house Thursday night.
Cori Jobman
The Indianapolis Airport Authority unveiled its new Sustainable Airport Master Plan for the Indianapolis Regional Airport to the public at an open house Thursday night in the Buck Creek Township community room.
The master plan is a “20 year plan … for what the airport development will be over that period of time,” per Deputy Senior Director of Planning and Development at the Indianapolis Airport Authority Drew Genneken. Plans were included for several aspects of the future of the airport, some of which included the airport’s future development, sustainability, potential modifications to Airport Boulevard, potential runway layouts and the airport’s potential environmental impact.
The airport’s land use plan included several potential large hangars the airport could build in the future, with one reserved for future private development and two for flex-use development. According to Senior Aviation Planner at CHA, a consultant for the plan, Robert LaFayaette, the reserved private development would be used in case a private company, with the examples given of UPS or FedEx, wanted to have a permanent hangar at the airport. The potential flex-use hangers could be used for that purpose or for the expansion of general aviation at the airport.
Genneken said in a press briefing that commercial flight was not in the current plan for the airport over the next 20 years, but did not rule it out. He also said that while noise was found to not be a concern in the environmental impact assessment for the plan, should the airport expand faster than the 20 year plan expects, up to and including the addition of commercial flights, that would need to be reassessed.
The plan used a unique process when integrating its sustainability programs: whereas most master plans have a separate sustainability step, sustainability was looked at as a substep at each part of the process, defining and maintaining sustainability goals throughout the plan.
“The sustainable and resiliency components are added in layered in or basically an addressing things such as environmental sensitivities being a good partner with the local community, energy efficiency and things of that nature as well as, from a resiliency perspective, just trying to look at how we do things that last a long time and don’t require additional work or to rework the function over long period of time,” Genneken said.
Roads and traffic impact were not a major factor in the plan, as the airport only manages Airport Boulevard, but LaFayette said that the roundabout at the entrance to the airport on Mt. Comfort Road that was installed as a part of the Mt. Comfort Corridor improvements was a major improvement, preventing large trucks from having to make left turns onto the road. The one potential improvement the plan identified was cutting out the sharp turn as CR 500W turns onto Airport Boulevard, with a potential plan to smooth that out into a curve that would be easier for large vehicles to navigate.
Over 60 people attended the open house Thursday night.
The airport’s master plan states its mission as follows: “We are committed to creating sustainable aviation for our community by supporting safe and efficient general aviation services and investing in our infrastructure. We will work to balance the needs of our airport with the needs of our community to ensure that we continue to grow in a responsible and sustainable way.”
