Montgomery County Short on Options for Airport

Unless joins forces with the, chances of it running an airport at are virtually non-existent, an official said Friday.

Mike McGee, executive director of the Horsham Land Reuse Authority, said Montgomery County – like the other 16 applicants who applied for a piece of the 892 federal acres up for grabs – received questions stemming from its incomplete notice of interest. Weeks later, McGee said the county has yet to respond. 

“We have to move on. If people don’t respond, they don’t respond,” McGee said. “Everyone out there has known of this since September of last year. They had from December to the 22nd of March to prepare their NOI. It’s time to move on. The board has to make some decisions.”

Montgomery County had initially said they did not want to operate an airport, but they simply wanted to see the use considered in the redevelopment process, which is why the county submitted the application. On Friday, McGee, calling the application “severely lacking,” said he still did not know the county’s intent.

“Do they want to mothball it? Do they want to operate it? Where’s the money coming from?” McGee said, rattling off questions, noting that the county failed to supply 90 percent of the required information. “I think the board has an easy decision to make with regard to that NOI.”

McGee did say, however, that the county could move forward if it opts to join forces with the Bucks County Airport Authority. 

“In the ideal scenario that would be done by December,” McGee said. “They can work on who is going to operate that airport.”

During Wednesday’s Montgomery County Commissioners meeting, Chairman James Matthews said the commissioners were planning to join with Bucks County Airport Authority.

“The thought of tearing the base down ... doesn’t make sense to me,” Matthews said.

Matthews also said that the last week’s commissioners meeting on the airport possibility – which drew citizens both for and against an airport – would be the last as the matter has been “exhausted.”

Also coming to an end are the HLRA's public meetings aimed at gauging community sentiment. After months of meetings attended by hundreds of residents and community members, The HLRA board is expected to “rule on” each of the - or applications submitted by public entities and nonprofits - at its July 27 meeting, McGee said. The board, he said, would determine which are “worthy of further review and planning.”

Those would be worked into three redevelopment plan alternatives that the is expected to present at the board’s Aug. 17 meeting. Then, at the HLRA’s November meeting, one of the three redevelopment plans would be approved and sent off to the Department of Defense for the final ok.

McGee was quick to point out that inclusion into a redevelopment plan this summer does not mean the proposed use would necessarily come to be.

“Just because the board says ‘yes try to incorporate it into the three alternatives’ … doesn’t mean for sure that they get it,” McGee said. “They still have to apply, in the case of the airport, to the FAA. It ain’t over.”