AJC COVER STORY PAULDING COUNTY, 7/27/14 Airport backer’s headwind Businessman still pressing commercialization despite opposition. By Kelly Yamanouchi Brett Smith was about to roll up his terminal blueprints and go home to New York after Gwinnett County in 2012 rejected his plan — which he had pushed for three years — to turn Briscoe Field into a second commercial airport for metro Atlanta. Then Paulding County called, asking if Smith and his firm, Propeller Investments, wanted to help commercialize that county’s tiny airport. He decided to stick around. So it is that Smith, 44, who came to Atlanta as a college student, has now spent the past five years waging a lonely effort to establish a long-discussed second airport in the region. The Paulding plan was supposed to be a slam dunk compared to Gwinnett, given that it enjoyed county officials’ support. But it, too, has been stalled by attacks that reflect how hard it is to initiate airline flights into a developed region with entrenched interests aligned against it. Smith says he’s not going anywhere, though. “I have no intention of stopping. Why would I?” Smith asks. “When I believe in something, I follow through.” Smith has already gotten a good bit further in Paulding, where his company has a 20-year lease to run Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport, currently used only by private or business planes. If the airport can gain federal certification to operate commercially, an airline can begin service. The runway can handle medium-sized airliners, and only a few other physical improvements are needed. But that prospect has generated fierce opposition from a group of county residents who’ve mounted legal and bureaucratic roadblocks. It’s earned two large and vocal enemies in the form of the city of Atlanta and Delta Air Lines. Neither wants to see any potential rival to Hartsfield-Jackson International emerge. Despite his experience in Gwinnett, “I didn’t expect this at all, to be perfectly candid,” Smith says. “It’s frustrating.” Smith says his persistence is borne partly of a belief that metro Atlanta, one of the few big U.S. cities with a single airline airport, needs a second. At one time the city of Atlanta agreed and even bought land in Paulding as a potential site for a reliever airport. Support cracking? Smith says if he fails in Paulding, he doubts the region will have a shot at getting a second commercial airport in the forseeable future. He doubts another effort would get the local political support he initially secured there. That support is showing cracks as well. In May, three candidates who have questioned the airport plan won primary elections for Paulding’s Board of Commissioners, with support from anti-airport commercialization residents. Paulding commissioner Todd Pownall — the only member of the board to question the plan from the start — says the airport should abandon the commercialization plan. “Why would you go against the will of the people?” he asks. Opposition has not dimmed Smith’s resolve. “We are not going to give up on our commercial certification, period,” he says. Smith’s company, Propeller Investments, was set up in 2008 to privatize and commercialize U.S. airports. But the firm, which has no staff beyond Smith and other principals, has yet to fully realize that goal anywhere. Propeller also invests in aviation businesses and bought a Kennesaw company that is developing wing parts for military aircraft to cut drag and boost fuel efficiency. But Propeller’s primary aim is to strike public-private partnerships at airports, and not just in Atlanta. Last month it made a proposal to build a passenger terminal at Everett, Wash.’s Paine Field, outside of Seattle. Smith says the outcome there won’t change his commitment in Paulding. ‘Fascinated with flight’ Smith says he began wondering about the lack of an alternative to Hartsfield-Jackson when he flew to and from the city while at Emory. After college, he worked in finance and lived in Hong Kong. But the airport situation stuck in his mind, fueled by a lifelong interest in aviation. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve just been fascinated with flight,” says Smith, who after college pursued his pilot’s license . Smith managed a subsidiary of a company run by his father, then co-founded a software company called ei3. He then started Propeller, using his own money and some from investors. After the Gwinnett project failed, Smith agreed to talk with Paulding officials about their hopes for the county’s just-built airport 38 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta. Their aim: to turn it into an economic driver that could create jobs for the bedroom community, which lost much of its economic steam when the real estate industry went bust several years ago and decimated many of the construction and housing industry jobs there. The plan includes not just airline service but aviation-related businesses that would set up shop. Smith and Paulding officials say they don’t envision large-scale service to many destinations, at least not in the near term. Rather, they say, they want to attract a carrier that would offer a few leisure flights a week to destinations such as Orlando. Smith has even put up a few billboards promising cut-rate flights and jobs at the Paulding airport, which he has branded as Silver Comet Field. Opponents, who’ve put up their own billboard, fear unwanted noise and congestion, no matter how modest the initial service. Their legal efforts already have forced an environmental assessment that will significantly delay necessary work on the airport before it could gain certification. No airline partner Meanwhile, it’s unclear what airline would try to start service at Paulding, despite Smith’s confidence when the idea was announced in late 2013 that a deal was imminent. The most likely candidate is thought to be Las Vegas-based discounter Allegiant Air, whose CEO, Maurice Gallagher, is familiar with the Atlanta market . Gallagher was a co-founder of Atlanta-based ValuJet Airlines, which later morphed into AirTran. Allegiant has acknowledged talks with Paulding but has not commented further. Many wonder if Smith and county officials have the stamina and money to sustain the legal fight, and whether Delta’s outspoken opposition will intimidate any potential airline. Delta CEO Richard Anderson denounced the plan the day after it was announced. Delta and the city of Atlanta argue that Hartsfield-Jackson is too important an economic driver for the region to have resources shifted elsewhere. The Paulding airport “is going to be paid for with our tax dollars,” Anderson said when recently asked about the issue. He added that Hartsfield-Jackson is established as “the airport for the entire region.” Anderson said the reason Atlanta has the world’s busiest airport, with nonstop flights to more than 100 destinations, is that “we don’t dilute the strength of the hub.” Smith counters that in metro Atlanta “the dominant carrier in this market is basically able to charge whatever they want. What we’re trying to do adds competition into the market... very limited competition, but at least it’s something.” Paulding airport director Blake Swafford, who leads the county’s involvement and is working closely with Smith, said “the fact that it’s hard is not a good reason not to do it.” Swafford said he thinks Smith wants to build his company but also make a mark. “There’s some reward for making money ... (but) I think after he sold his first company, he had a drive to really do something that is a really tangible benefit, so that when he’s 80 or 90, he can point to it and say, ‘That’s a good thing and it’s because of me, or at least partially because of me.’”
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 13:09:30 +0000
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