Eastern Iowa Airport moving ahead with ‘Super Park’ process

CEDAR RAPIDS - The Eastern Iowa Airport is laying the ground work with the Federal Aviation Administration to offer land for lease in Iowa's only 582-acre 'Super Park” to prospective tenants.

Airport Director Marty Lenss told the Cedar Rapids Airport Commission on Monday that paperwork will be submitted to the federal agency to obtain release of 483 acres of the land in the business park purchased with federal grants.

'It will allow investment decisions to drive the lease,” Lenss said. 'For an airport to do a lease term beyond 30 years gets more involved with the FAA.

'If an airport does a 50-year lease, the FAA looks at that as more like a sale of the land. Once we are released from the grant restrictions, we will be able to look at lease terms beyond 30 years.”

Lenss said the process with the FAA, which could take about a year and require additional meetings at the FAA regional office in Kansas City, Mo., will progress while the business park is marketed to prospective tenants.

Foth Infrastructure and Environment, the airport's local engineering consultant, and Kaplan Kirsch and Rockwell, a Denver law firm with experience in FAA regulations, will work with the airport to gain release of the land.

'Our airport layout plan, which is a document that guides development per The Eastern Iowa Airport, identifies the land as ‘non-aeronautical revenue.' It's a term that means essentially it's going to be a business park,” Lenss said.

Land south of the business park and north of Wright Brothers Boulevard SW purchased with federal grants for eventual construction of a third runway will still be available, he noted. The FAA would require a significant increase in the number of takeoffs and landings at the airport to justify the expense of funding its share of building the runway.