On Wednesday, we attended the Cherry Capital Airport Community Forum held by the Northwest Regional Airport Authority in the Suttons Bay library. That all sounds very official, like I'm almost a real blogger.
Kevin Klein, CEO of Cherry Capitol Airport, gave a presentation on the airport expansion slated to begin next year. It was a combination of construction photos, a video on airport history, a Q&A session, politics in transportation funding, and suggestions for the future of TVC. I found it very interesting, and I admit to this strange little fact - I'm a Kevin Klein fanboy. Has there ever been a fanboy for an airport CEO? Probably not. But I've enjoyed reading the frequent updates in Express, the local weekly paper in Northern Michigan.
If you are interested and weren't one of the eight people not affiliated with the airport in the room, you can read all about the program on the tvcairport.com site. It is a fascinating project. The Christman Company is slated to do the new concourse, B, and Kevin discussed eventually creating another concourse. Spoiler alert: it will be called Concourse C. And I learned that the FAA will not fund expansion based on projected traveler numbers, just current numbers, so the airport expansion is being limited to just the one additional concourse for now.
For the suggestion portion of the forum, I had three: better deicing capabilities, flights to Las Vegas, and a statue of Kevin Klein. He good-naturedly, but convincedly, declined any desire for such a statue.
Oh, and another thing I learned at the forum was that the airlines, not the airport, are responsible for deicing. So, it was not the fault of Cherry Capital Airport for the deicing debacle on our trip to Puerto Vallarta in March, it was Delta's fault.
It was an interesting session, and I was glad we had made the trip up M-22 to Suttons Bay. And the pre-forum stop at Hop Lot didn't hurt, either.