Residents are collecting signatures to place a measure on the 2024 City of Boulder ballot that would close the city’s airport. The effort is the latest in a long debate over whether to repurpose the airport’s 179 acres into a residential neighborhood.
The Boulder Municipal Airport, which started as a dirt landing strip in 1928 in the city’s northwest corner, is mainly used by private pilots, people training to become pilots or those who fly glider planes.
The campaign organizers have proposed two measures: one to shut down the airport “as soon as reasonably feasible” and another to redevelop the land into a “sustainable, mixed-use neighborhood” ensuring “at least 50% of on-site housing units” are permanently affordable for low- to middle-income residents. The organizers want both measures to pass.
The group includes ex-city councilmembers and housing advocates. Meanwhile, residents and airport users who are advocating to keep the airport open are also gathering support, albeit not for a ballot measure, as part of a separate campaign. Proponents of the airport see it as a community asset for pilot training, scientific research and certain emergency operations.
The process for closing the airport is unclear. The city has commitments to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to keep it open under grants it received from the agency. City officials have said they are conducting a financial and legal analysis on the theoretical timing and costs of closing the airport. They plan to present their findings to the Boulder City Council later this year.
See our previous reporting on the Boulder Municipal Airport and the conversation around its future.
I like the little airport, it is nostalgic and serves a purpose. What I Do NOT like are the other small airplanes that used to be crop dusters. Their engines are obnoxiously loud and extremely noisy. They are only at the airport for those who have fancy gliders. They should be banned from all surrounding neighborhoods—you cannot get away from the noise.
Thank you!
Registered voters in the City of Boulder can sign online to help get these initiatiaves onto the ballot to repurpose the airport into new, beautiful, walkable, affordable neighborhoods. Please visit airportneighborhoodcampaign.org to learn more and sign electronically to get on the November ballot!
Yes, it can be done! Other airports have separated from the FAA, such as Santa Monica, Rialto, East Hampton, and Stapleton here in the Denver area. Every airport’s situation is different, and the FAA puts up obstacles, but it is feasible.
Kudos to the Boulder Progressives for requiring 50% affordable housing on-site for this ballow measure. The current 20 percent and cash in lieu does not work and is an incentive for expensive single-family housing. This should be the standard for all new developments. The Progressives now need to get real for an affordability requirement for ADUs and unrelated persons.
Yes! So glad to see this effort.
The city council should save everyone a lot of time and effort and closes the airport, but always good to other options on the table!
EVEN if the airport were closed, I call on a housing moratorium in Boulder. You can’t eat a condo. Housing is the curse, not the panacea. Overpopulation is the problem.
My dad would turn in his grave. He was a navigator in WWII, and after his education at CU in the late ’40’s, he worked in aerospace engineering and appreciated flight. He complained Boulder was too big then, at around 30K.
Lynn, This is a common misconception, however it’s not population per se as much as is consumption. Someone with a private plane and large under-occupied home creates much more emissions than someone with no plane that lives in dense housing (and hopefully lives closer to their work!).
This is an odd argument to me. Cosmopolitan Boulderites who travel internationally will have a carbon footprint that mirrors or exceeds airport users and “large under-occupied” homeowners.
Playing a game of “who’s greener” seems pretty silly. Massive numbers of people will continue to commute into Boulder for jobs, events and its vast natural beauty. Adding a few hundred housing units won’t make a dent in these Boulder ‘users’ nor conversely will removing the airport suddenly make Boulder incredibly green.
I think it’s pretty clear: 9,000 people signed a petition to save Boulder airport while last I saw fewer than 1,000 were mustered for the cause of removing it. It serves as a valuable hub for natural disasters — and I am highly doubtful the touted helipad will be useful when fires or floods inevitably displace hundreds or thousands.
I would sign a ballot measure which seeks greater FAA funding to enhance the airport, seek ways transition its users to unleaded gas, avoid a costly legal battle and and carry on it’s important and irreplaceable utility for the 21st century. Boulder could always use more housing, but this isn’t the place to do it.
Cameron – I was responding to Lynn’s comment.
Overall, the situation is pretty simple for me and I would suggest that it should be simple for the council (if we were truly progressive or liberal or whatever). We must close the airport to cut GHG emissions and other pollutants. The vast majority of activities at Boulder airport are non-essential and high emitting.
Once the 180 acres of land is returned to our control, then it’s hard for me not to see how some of it would be used for affordable housing among other things.
Since you commented, I’d love to know more about your situation. Do you live in the city? What kind of plane do you have? How many hours a year do you fly?
> The vast majority of activities at Boulder airport are non-essential and high emitting.
It seems a pretty slippery slope to determine it’s non-essential; the airport is essential to people employed by users and for large scale emergency operations.
Is the airport high emitting according to any environmental agency? I’ve yet to hear any analysis that indicates that with respect to anything but lead that the airport is ‘high emitting’.
I’m all ears to an analysis how several hundred new cars driving 10,000 miles per year (on gas or coal fueled electricity) compares to the emissions of Boulder Airport users.
> Once the 180 acres of land is returned to our control, then it’s hard for me not to see how some of it would be used for affordable housing among other things.
Who’s control? Right now it seems like a lot of folks in Boulder want to keep the airport; I guess not their control?
> Since you commented, I’d love to know more about your situation. Do you live in the city? What kind of plane do you have? How many hours a year do you fly?
I don’t own a plane, I’ve never flown into the airport and I live in Gunbarrel under the airports “area of influence”. Maybe that’s surprising; one doesn’t need to be an airport user to see its value.
Not that simple Mike. Quality of life. Cost overruns. Even with the most miraculous energy efficient innovations, less is more. The shear physical space a human takes up, what about that?
Do not close the Airport! It is a treasure and would never be replaced. There are lots of places for housing and virtually none for airports.
This airport should be left alone. Let’s think about the massive increase in traffic and the infrastructure to handle it, plus the extra pollution created. Plus, you know that the builders will just pay the “fine” to not build affordable homes, just like the Millennium Hotel builders. And what about the plot of land at the old garden center on 33rd that was flattened and then not built on by the developers once they’d built their “luxury living in the heart of Boulder” apartments. What exactly is the vision for Boulder? How big does it need to get? What do developers add to our city except more buildings and traffic? Do they plant trees, or add solar on their developments, or build more studio apartments? The soul of this once quirky and unique city is being destroyed for nothing more than cash. Shame on the City for not standing up to developers and not taking care of their long time tax paying residents.
I support the Boulder Airport. The process for closing it is VERY clear, even if the writer of this article doesn’t understand it, or want to publish it to help educate the citizens. A full 1/3rd of the airport property was gifted to the City of Boulder, for the express purpose of expanding and maintaining the property as an airport, which is a hard legal requirement – fully understood by City Council if not by the airport opponents. Furthermore, the grants which the city has taken came with obligations that require the City to maintain it, for many, many years. All of that obligation would come at a very high price and a very hard fought legal battle. The City would be better off buying undeveloped land on the open market – there’s a 40 acre parcel right across the street on Independence by the way. Available right now for low cost housing if we wanted it. Clearly we do not want that.
Closing the airport is a collossally bad idea, which will be fought at every turn by those of us who value it in our community. If the community really wants low cost housing, we should have a broader conversation about the more than vast majority of City owned property which is not being talked about as available for development of housing. The airport property is less than 1% of total City property that could be converted. Why are we not talking about that? Because the city residents don’t want more housing – they have to almost 100 years consistently voted in favor of less housing, and this policy has driven up valuation and cost to live here. Low population density is an intentional policy in place for what we term “zero growth”. A bit of a mis-nomer, but an intentional policy nonetheless.
The airport is important for emergency services, career training, jobs in aviation and as a critical piece of transportation. It supports the training and time building jobs necessary to be a commercial pilot. This resource cannot and should not be pushed to other communities, nor should it be removed from our own community. The airport has been here for almost 100 years and should serve us for 100 more.
Save the Boulder Airport!
Mike D. I live in the city. I don’t have a plane. I don’t fly “hours” at all.
Even if Boulder somehow ignored their obligations under the federal land grant to operate the airport in perpetuity, such a notion would be counter productive. Shutting down the airport would defeat the progressive’s expressed agenda. High density housing brings much greater environmental, traffic, noise and crime than does the protected land and airspace associated with an airport.
John – Care to show your work? Where do you get that the proposed high density housing would have a greater environmental impact than the existing airport? Aviation is a very emissions intensive and polluting activity. At Boulder’s airport it’s also almost entirely non-essential activities so it’s an easy way for us to cut emissions.
I would certainly hope that there would be plans for public transit in the new airport development and I assume any cars wouldn’t run on leaded fuel.
Nigel, I agree.
The airport is moving in the wrong direction for our climate goals – its greenhouse gases have INCREASED 36% since 2005 because of increased demand. No other source has increased this much over this time-frame, as per the the Boulder’s airports greenhouse gases emissions in the CITY OF BOULDER’S 2019 GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS INVENTORY & SUMMARY REPORT SEPTEMBER 2020 (https://bouldercolorado.gov/media/4884/download?inline#:~:text=The%202019%20City%20of%20Boulder,relatively%20consistent%20with%20previous%20inventories)
Note that natural gas usage increased as well, but the city’s population increased about 10-12% during this period. So the airport GHG emission increase was TRIPLE the increase in natural gas GHG emissions.
The airport does not serve the full community, but it is heavily subsidized by taxpayers who pay the salaries of transportation staff that must plan for its future. The airport parcel which is owned by the city of Boulder taxpayers would be a much better choice to develop than the “planning reserve.” The planning reserve, northeast of U.S. Highway 36, is a plot of 469 acres that may be annexed into the city of Boulder, and is largely undeveloped. Although some current users of the airport suggest the north Boulder planning reserve as an alternative to the airport parcel for residential development (see Denver Gazette Apr 7, 2024 article,) the airport parcel is a better choice as it is closer to the rail corridor that Colorado leaders envision along the Diagonal highway, is already fully annexed into the city and has city utilities.
We need to envision a future that reduces air pollution, supports smart development along rail corridors and preserves open space to preserve our quality of life and community values of Boulder.
Penn, some basic math from the inventories you show would indicate how much worse 2,000 housing units would be than the airport.
Based on the data you have posted, each home in Boulder produces around 5mt of CO2 from electrical and gas consumption. Multiply that by 2,000 and you get over 10x more CO2 emissions (10k mt vs 700mt) — not accounting for cars.
Even with more efficient homes there is no way that replacing the airport with housing decreases CO2 emissions.
Of course that’s correct Cameron, I hadn’t thought of that line of approach. Well Laura?