hardlanding wrote:
What is the most significant aspect forcing the PoF move - is it solely the housing development around Chino making it politically too antagonistic towards the airport, airshows, noise, etc.?
Does the Santa Maria airport have enough buffer area between it and all the nearby development that there's no similar contention there?
From what my friends at PoF have told me, it comes down to several things:
1) Mainly encroachment. If you look at the farmer fields to the east of the main runways, that whole area has been growing like crazy. The old farmers or their families are selling off the land to big commercial enterprises. The east end is quickly becoming a giant warehouse district, very similar to the east end off of ONT airport. Amazon has either already built or is about to build a giant distribution center under the flight path to the runways. Because of this encroachment, it places many more restrictions on things like the ability to have an airshow and/or the size of waivered airspace when an airshow is happening.
2) Less than desirable support from the city and/or county. As is expected, cities and counties always talk to those with the most money. Unfortunately, PoF is a mere "drop-in-the-bucket" when being compared to entities with millions and millions to spare, such as Amazon. PoF will never be able to compete with those kind of corporations.
3) With land becoming so valuable in that area, most people I talk to seem to think that soon Chino airport will develop into Santa Monica airport. That is, slow, but ever-increasing restrictions that eventually end up with the airport being shut down. Land is way, way, too valuable in that area and airports are not huge money making operations for cities and counties, unless it has a big passenger carrying presence. Chino does not have that. Unfortunately, money will always trump everybody and everyone. Every person I've talked to about the future of Chino airport says it's only a matter of time before the airport is shut down and the land is sold off to the highest bidder - commercial interests. How long will that be? Nobody knows, but PoF is being proactive by trying to get ahead of the curve before being forced out permanently and with no home to go to.
4) From what I've been told, there is plenty of "buffer" land around Santa Maria for encroachment to not be a factor for many, many decades - hence their desire to move there.