City Council approves design for South Lake Tahoe Airport

Over the past three years, a new master plan for the South Lake Tahoe airport has been in the creation process, from the awarding of a $315,000 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2012 to community outreach to Tuesday's presentation on a final design plan.

Michael Hotaling, Vice President of C&S Companies who were the planners hired for the project, presented the top choices for both the air field plan and surrounding land use plan during Tuesday's City Council meeting. The public weighed in originally during a February, 2014 community meeting where concerns and ideas where shared. Four more public meetings followed that.

Closing the airport is not a viable option, so new plans to update the property to meet new industry standards and projections of traffic were needed. The previous airport master plan was completed in 1992 and the airport now serves more general aviation needs instead of being used for commercial purposes.

Wanting a plan that was sustainable, economically viable, is operationally efficient, involved natural resource conservation, and socially responsible was a goal of the City as they went through the process of a new master plan.

The FAA will be footing the bill and wants the airport to be safe, their number on goal. They want a 20-year plan to meet both current and forecast demand which is expected to grow moderately each year according to Hotaling.

During outreach meetings, the favorite plan of the public was a "Do Nothing" approach for the airfield and a land use plan that maintains flexibility for the future, though all proposed plans for land were fairly close in popularity.

The City chose a hybrid of two plans that maintains the runway length of 100 feet, will reconfigure taxiway system and be a B-II standard airport (plans accommodate the size of today's planes). The land use portion is a flexible plan that enhances pilot services and allows for both aeronautical and non-aeronautical businesses at the airport. The plan maintains the flexibility to accommodate future potential growth.

After the Council's approval of these two plans, the next step is to finalize the drawings, publish a final draft report, get a CEQA analysis, get a review of the Airport Layout Plan (ALP) and then submit to the FAA for final approval.

The History
The airport was built in 1959, just in time to help with transportation needs of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Most airports were built during World War II to help support the war, so the South Lake Tahoe airport is rare that it came much later and was built to serve the needs of the community for tourism.

In 1978, the airport saw the most people pass through when 294,188 passengers landed in South Lake Tahoe. In 2011, the last year of data available, there were 24,000 flights. 79% of those flights were visitor driven, 2% were for military use and 19% were local flights. These figures are the opposite of most airports where local flights (private pilots with their own planes) are responsible for the largest percentage of flights.

The City of South Lake Tahoe has been the operator the airport since they purchased it from El Dorado County in 1983 for $1.