City of Boulder voters may soon decide whether to close the municipal airport for the first time in the city’s history.
Organizers with the ballot measure committee, Airport Neighborhood Campaign, have gathered enough signatures to place a measure on the November ballot to decommission the Boulder Municipal Airport “as soon as reasonably feasible,” city officials confirmed on June 13. A separate but related measure to redevelop the land into a “sustainable, mixed-use neighborhood” also qualified for the ballot, officials said.
“It’s just a wonderful feeling that our hard work paid off,” Laura Kaplan, a member of the city’s Planning Board and organizer with the ballot measure committee, told Boulder Reporting Lab.
The Boulder Municipal Airport began as a dirt landing strip in 1928 in the city’s northeast corner. It is used primarily by private pilots, trainees, glider pilots and scientific researchers, according to surveys. It has less traffic than other regional airports, such as Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Jefferson County. In 2023, the airport recorded about 60,000 total operations, including take-offs and landings, according to city records.
The two measures are likely to be the most contentious questions on this year’s local ballot. They will serve as both a referendum on the city’s airport and a major flashpoint in the city’s search for land to build housing to help drive down costs.
City Clerk Elesha Johnson said she conducted a preliminary search of the city’s electronic elections records and did not find any indication of a prior ballot measure to close the city’s airport. Newspaper archives also indicate residents have never voted on such a measure.
Proponents of closing the airport have cited noise and potential lead pollution from aircraft fuel as top concerns. The organizers behind the ballot measures have described closing the airport as an opportunity to free up land for housing.
Others, including local pilots, have girded for a fight at the ballot box. They have formed a new ballot measure committee, Boulder Airport Association-Save Boulder Airport, partially with the goal of waging a campaign to highlight the value of the city’s airport. They view the airport as a major generator of sales tax revenue and resource for emergency operations. The airport is used for some training and rescue missions and wildfire operations, but it is not considered essential in fire operations given the city’s proximity to the larger Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, according to city fire officials.
The Boulder City Council will have the opportunity to refer a competing measure to the November ballot — such as a measure to keep the airport open. They could also propose amendments to the measures.
Even if the ballot measures were to pass, what would come next is unclear. The Federal Aviation Administration has given the city grant money to buy land and maintain landing strips. Those grants include assurances that the city will keep the airport operating and maintained, according to an FAA official.
Earlier this week, Stan Garnett, a lawyer and former Boulder County District Attorney, sent city officials a letter on behalf of the Boulder Airport Association, emphasizing that decommissioning the airport is unlikely to succeed due to FAA regulations.
“This is not simply ‘free land’ to expand housing,” Garnett wrote. “It will cost the City and taxpayers millions of dollars and a protracted fight with the federal government that is unlikely to succeed. This land should instead be left to its intended purpose: to support and expand aviation in the Boulder community.”
Proponents of the ballot measure contend that the FAA recently allowed a municipal airport in California to close, according to media reports. They also argue that the city’s contracts did not require it to keep the airport open in perpetuity and that certain terms related to repayment of grant money for land purchases have expired. “We are undeterred,” Kaplan said.
Clarification: This story was updated on June 17 to clarify the arguments made by proponents of the ballot measure related to the city’s contracts with the FAA.
Anyone believing that the Airport should be decommissioned and redeveloped is living in a fairly tale. Not only will Boulder be required to payback the $300 million, but they will need to purchase all of the private hangers so the cost to actually decommission the space is likely to exceed $500,000,000 or more. Of course, there is the loss of revenue to consider as well. The planning committee still hasn’t figured out how to improve the infrastructure or how to accommodate another 12,000 – 20,000 residents on the city streets. Grid lock on our main North/South streets is already a common sight. I am hopeful that this short sighted and very expensive ballet measure will be defeated in November. We need innovative solutions that don’t cripple the city in the long run for costly short term solutions. Affordable housing is a pipe dream, when City Council has not and doesn’t possess the fortitude to reform the planning department and permit process. The City has yet to approve proposed land developments on the books. Finally, we need to address public transportation. I would like to see the downtown bus station removed from downtown and relocated at CU South campus. We run no less than 6 busses every 30 minutes from South Boulder to the Central Bus station – with less than 5 passengers on average on each bus. There must be a more efficient and cost effective system.
Thank you for your reporting, BRL!
To clarify a bunch of wonky details for anyone who is interested, the contracts the city has with the FAA are of course still legally binding. At issue is what those contracts require. The contracts that the city of Boulder signed when the FAA gave us grants to purchase land for the airport never contained any provision to keep the airport open in perpetuity, and the 20-year expectation to pay back an amortized amount of the value of the grants has long expired since the contracts were signed in the 1950s and 1960s.
We did accept much smaller grants for airport operations and maintenance which are still within the 20-year period. Those contracts also do not contain any committment to operate the airport in perpetuity. We would either need to run out the remaining timeline on those grants or negotiate a closure agreement with the FAA that includes paying them back this much smaller sum of money.
As the article mentioned, the Banning Municipal Airport reached a closure agreement for their airport this year and is an informative case study. People who say that the FAA simply does not allow general aviation airports to close are mistaken. Note that the Banning Airport land purchase contracts were signed in 1983, AFTER the FAA adopted a policy in 1981 requiring that airports that accept FAA grants for land must operate in perpetuity. And yet, the city of Banning still successfully reached an airport closure agreement. https://www.flyingmag.com/general/city-cleared-to-begin-phasing-out-banning-municipal-airport/
The Banning airport has “averages 105 operations per week—75 percent of which are transient.”
“The Boulder airport has “Aircraft operations: avg 155/day
87% local general aviation
13% transient general aviation”
I don’t know how helpful it is to compare seemingly situations.
Note that the FAA required Banning to pay back the original land grant at current market value.
If the city can’t get the FAA to come to a closure agreement how much time is left to ‘run out the remaining timeline?’ Wouldn’t it be the worst of worlds where the airport is not being invested in but is trying to operate and the city won’t have funds from the potential closure yet is still litigating. Where that money will come from was not in the petitions.
This letter to Mayor Brockett from FAA Official linked in article seems adamant that it can’t be closed:
“Since 1982, the City has entered into agreements with the FAA for the acceptance of Federal funds for airport development projects and land acquisition under the Airport Improvement Program (AIP), 49 U.S.C. 47101 et seq. In accepting over $12.7 million in AIP funds, the City has agreed to specific Federal obligations, including a commitment to keep the Airport open and make it available for public use as an airport. Since the City acquired land with AIP funds, this obligation runs in perpetuity. Thus, the City may not close the Airport without FAA’s consent and without a formal release of the City from the terms of the applicable Federal regulations.”
Is this just an opinion? Why does this need to be so convuluted? Either Boulder is under contractual obligation or it’s not. If it is, then it would be up to the discretion of the FAA to sign off on closing airport if that’s what Boulder wants. Why even argue about whether or not we are required by the FAA to keep it open? The legal requirments should not be so difficult to determine.
If we are going to do this, there needs to a plan in place so that residents of this new neighborhood can get around without driving everywhere. The neighborhood should include a grocery store, school, and other walkable amenities, enough density to support the above, and there needs to be a plan for good, high-frequency bus service and bicycle connections to get people around the rest of the city. I think the planning board and organizers behind this need to do a really good job of convincing voters that this isn’t just car-dependent sprawl with a few small amenities, but rather a practical, walkable urban neighborhood that is well-connected to Boulder as a whole via multimodal transportation.
100% on building a self-sustaining community that doesn’t require autos for every resident!
How do you suggest paying for such a plan especially the school?
I live near the airport and support it. I think it is shortsighted to close it. Aviation one day will be very different than it is today. The airport is a valuable asset. Once gone it is gone. This is a land grab for housing just like if we were to do the same for a parcel of open space. It will increase Boulder’s population and therefore traffic in and out of Boulder, not reduce it. It will raise our carbon footprint. This in not a solution to our housing costs. The size of our town and limits of our expansion make Boulder what it is. Because people want to live here doesn’t mean we have to change our town’s size to make room for them. As residents who make Boulder home please look forward and consider this carefully.
Actually, affordable housing that is located in close proximity to the jobs people currently commute to from outside of Boulder (where housing is more affordable) will reduce commuter traffic into and out of Boulder.
You may be right. I honestly don’t know. I’ve heard other people state that as fact before. But it seems common sense, to me, that an increase in population won’t reduce traffic.
If the means to get people around the city don’t exist, then you are right. Boulder’s primary focus needs to be giving every resident and commuter the ability to get to where they need to go and the incentive to do so via a means other than driving. No point taking a bus when it’s just as traffic-jammed as cars.
Kenneth, I think that’s absolutely true.
It’s living in a fairy tale to believe that thousands of new residents wouldn’t bring cars with them to visit open spaces, nearby towns or commute locally in when bicycling and buses aren’t viable.
I would love to see direct observed data on whether or not new housing in Boulder has impacted commuter traffic, bar any reductions due to covid and work from home. I suspect the answer is that at best it hasn’t and at worst it’s only increased congestion as people still primarily commute by car.
> The airport is used for some training and rescue missions and wildfire operations, but it is not considered essential in fire operations given the city’s proximity to the larger Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, according to city fire officials.
This is massively deceptive on the part of ‘city officials’ and shortsighted; the airport was essential for the 2013 airlift operations due to flooding. Just look up some of the photos and you will see far more Chinook helicopters than what a lone helipad could accommodate.