Perhaps I’m missing the market on this, as I’m not involved in aviation. But is the store something that would attract small aircraft to warrant this? It’s a nice store and all, but are people going to literally fly in to go to it?
And for the fuel aspect, could the gas dock even handle aircraft? I don’t know much about aviation, but I would have thought it would be different fuel than for boats, and I don’t think the store has more than one tank, but may be wrong.
Last, I don’t see the concept of using the town pier as feasible. Folks already complain that the town pier is filled and hard to use. Adding planes doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. It also seems part of the concept might be to permit a plane ride business to keep a plane at the town dock? The boats of town residents can’t be docked overnight; at the pier. I don’t see how a plane should be treated differently. And the “alternative” option of building an extension of the existing gas dock is a dead end—the store doesn’t own the docks, the Pier 19 condo association does. Not to mention all of the state shoreland permit issues that this would raise.
I would be interested to hear what folks in the aviation community think about this, particularly for the winter. Would there be a use for a second winter runway, in addition to Alton? And 19 mile bay has a lot of ice fishing activity. How is that going to work?
Seems to me this concept raises way more questions than have been contemplated, and that this was all attempted to be done under the radar. The board of selectmen are right that this needs to be noticed for public hearing before the town agrees to anything on this.
|