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Published Monday, June 09, 2008 in Local

Airport privatization not new idea

By Jeff Bishop

The Times-Herald

Although there's currently a lot of buzzing about the possible privatization of the Newnan-Coweta Airport, this isn't the first time the airport has flown in that direction.

The headline of a March 23, 1997 edition of the Atlanta Business Chronicle trumpeted: "Newnan airport first to privatize."

The story's lead said that "privatization is taking off at Georgia airports," and that Coweta County was leading the way.

"County officials and the Newnan-Coweta Chamber of Commerce plan to use the airport as a tool to attract to new business to the rapidly-developing county," the story stated.

"We've grown to a point where we need professional management," explained Dr. Charles Barron, who was serving as chairman of the Coweta County Airport Authority at the time.

So what happened?

Lawrenceville-based Airport Technologies won the bid and did indeed manage the airport for a brief time. The plan of the company was to attract businesses to the airport and market it to executives worldwide to "transform the Newnan-Coweta County Airport into an economic engine that will generate between $25 million and $50 million for the area within five years."

It didn't work out quite that way.

"We hired a management company, and it worked out OK," said Coweta County Administrator Theron Gay.

"We didn't turn over the assets to anyone, but they did the books and the contracts and they did a pretty good job. But then we just kind of moved on."

The big money never materialized. In fact, Gay said, "We felt like we could do the same things, but in a more cost-effective way. We decided it would work better to have the financials handled through the county, rather than pay a contractor to do it."

John Hickman, who runs a private business out of the airport called Skys Aircraft, said that the problem there was "putting the cart before the horse."

"The airport doesn't build up and become big before industry comes in. You have to have the industry first. I mean, you can build all these hangars, but why do that if you have no airplanes to go in them?" he said.

The first job of the community should be "to get more industry into this area," he said. Then the airport will grow as the need grows, he feels.

"Privatization would just take away from the people what the people have funded with their taxpayer money," said Hickman. "It just adds another hand in the till."

Hickman said he wasn't the only person "a little upset" at how the airport was being run during the brief time it was under private management.

"Then the county took it back over and things improved tremendously," he said.

"I think when people are in business for themselves, there's an awful lot of pressure put on meeting those bills every month," said Hickman. "But if the airport is being operated as a public entity, even in the worst-case scenario you can go to the county commission and ask for more money."

But that hasn't been necessary under the current Airport Authority, Hickman said.

"They're keeping it in the black and doing a good job," he said.

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