Mt. Comfort Airport has been nestled in an attractive rural setting for the last 30 years. It is only 12 miles East of Indianapolis and is owned by the Indianapolis Airport Authority (IAA).
Friday, August 17, the IAA authorized more than $30,000 for a design study to rehabilitate Taxiway "A".
Photo: 2007
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When we married five years ago, we began searching for “middle ground.” I lived on Indy’s far east side, and my husband’s home was on the far west side of Muncie, (another city with a dead horse airport complete with costly aviation aids, including a VOR (Visual Omni Range) from taxes and even has a Control Tower of which there haven't been any controllers in for years). Why? It's another dead horse that uses up some prime farmland also. For two years we searched for a home and/or land all over Madison and Hancock counties. We were intrigued by historic Pendleton, but felt Anderson was rather depressed and desolate due to General Motor’s mass exodus. Nonetheless, we finally found the perfect home on the fringe of Lapel. Though it is small, Lapel has every necessity of daily life and then some. It is user friendly to the young and old alike. We couldn’t be happier.
Unfortunately, now the Towns of Fishers and Anderson want to convert 4,000 acres of prime farmland and homes into an airport and business complex. This will profoundly and forever change the lives of all who reside in or even close to this area. There are some who think that being good stewards of the land is old-fashioned, but quite to the contrary. As Governor Mitch Daniels states: “Agriculture adds $25 billion to Indiana’s economy every year, and we all must support this industry.” Maybe that is why the peach farmers in Alabama are removing the peach trees and trying to grow corn. If this tax base is annexed into Anderson, the property taxes for Lapel and Pendleton areas will increase exponentially, and the value of our properties will plummet.
There is considerable airline/commercial business in Mt. Comfort, which is positioned only one mile from I-70 and is but a short trip to both Anderson and Fishers. Moreover, the Anderson Municipal Airport is able to accommodate corporate jets. What about all of that deserted land left by General Motors? Utilizing for full capacity of this airport could bring the city of Anderson back to life!
Learn from past mistakes. Don’t sell our God-given natural assets to gain what some consider to be a necessity. The Nestle Corporation should know that agriculture is the heart and soul of their business. General Motors abandoned the City of Anderson without so much as a hubcap for those remaining, and the Nestle Company could likewise take every morsel, even the chocolate chips. Most likely a the only ones that might possibly benefit would be Fishers,In when they sell off their airport property for housing lots for millions and will be laughing all the way to the bank at the expense of Madison County.
I've never visited this site 'til today, so I'm new to this discussion. However, I am a local pilot so I can speak from that viewpoint. First, let me correct a couple of points: 1)VOR stands for VHF Omnidirectional Range, and 2)Delaware County/Johnson Field is staffed daily by federal air traffic controllers. There are thousands of VORs all over the country, and they are routinely used by commercial as well as general aviation pilots for navigation; I have no idea how much it costs to maintain them.
Anderson has nice, long runways that will accomodate almost any airplane short of a long-haul airliner. If Fishers wants to shut down their airport, that's fine. But pilots will have to move their planes to other airports, including Anderson, if they don't mind the drive to get to their planes. So most of their pilots won't like that. But, for a few million dollars, if you build a new "Anderson" airport, the Fisher's pilots will shorten the drive to their planes by , oh, fifteen minutes. Is that worth a few million dollars? I guess it is if it's not your money.
I personally don't see any sense to shutting down Anderson airport in order to build a new one.
'Course, I don't understand why the citizens of Indiana allow a 23-year-old RCA Dome to be torn down to replace that, either. Or, build a "bypass" around the I-465 bypass in order to shorten the drive to I-65 South by, oh, fifteen minutes. In all these cases it seems like a huge waste of money. Would you tear down your house to build a new one? Wouldn't it be more cost-effective (usually) to improve the existing structure? I guess I just don't think like a Hoosier.
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