Naples City Council agreed the Naples Airport Authority should continue its exploratory study of other possible airport locations as due diligence, but not necessarily plan to move the airport.

As both sides neared the end of a marathon eight-hour joint workshop on Nov. 7 without focusing on why the meeting was requested, City Attorney Matthew McConnell pressed Council to give the NAA an answer on whether it should continue with its $398,000 exploratory study, which identified four possible sites to move the airport in eastern Collier County. NAA Chair Rick Ruppert said the organization needed to know Council’s position to determine its next steps at its Nov. 21 meeting.

Council and the NAA agreed they need to fix noise and pollution problems that prompted the request for an exploratory study to seek alternate airport sites.

After much discussion, Council informally agreed 4-3 the study should continue. Vice Mayor Terry Hutchison explained the need to complete due diligence.

“Let’s get this done,” Hutchison said. “Nobody’s saying we’re going to move the airport. We just need to complete our due diligence while we concurrently look for ‘solves’ on the primary issues that our residents have brought forward today.”

Council members Ray Christman, Berne Barton and Bill Kramer adamantly opposed that stance, with Christman noting 12 people on the dais won’t solve the complaints. A coalition of airport business owners is needed to speak to elected officials about changes that are good for the community.

“That would … make the difference,” Christman said. “The folks who would be most likely to have the ear of those elected officials would be many of the folks in the business community, the aviation business community.”

Mayor Teresa Heitmann noted residents were upset when JSX moved to the airport after residents asked to stop growth. JSX, which begins service Nov. 21, will offer flights to New York and New Jersey five days weekly.

“The reason people said move the airport was because we were getting no relief in flights,” Heitmann said. “We got triple the flights.”

The 81-year-old Naples Airport, which began as a military airfield, is located on roughly one square mile on Airport-Pulling Road. It’s self-sustaining, uses no taxpayer money and leases most of its 733 acres from Naples for $1 yearly. According to the Florida Department of Transportation, it generates $781 million annually for the area.

Under an interlocal agreement, the NAA pays the city roughly $2 million to provide services at the airport, including police, fire, emergency services and utilities.

The NAA has spent years improving and monitoring noise and rewards pilots for adhering to Fly Safe, Fly Quiet voluntary 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfews. It continues to make improvements, including offering discounted unleaded fuel and banning Stage-2 jets (Stage-4 are the quietest).

But after years of noise complaints by neighbors and residents under flight paths, Council requested the NAA study a possible move. Last year, the NAA hired California-based Environmental Science Associates, which looked at four sites, including Immokalee Regional Airport, but didn’t rank them.

All have environmental obstacles, and all require rezoning by the county, which isn’t on board. Construction wouldn’t start for eight to 12 years, and completion wouldn’t be until 2040 or later. Estimates range from $790 million to $1.6 billion, depending on whether it’s a general aviation or commercial airport — and those 2024 estimates are expected to increase.

The Board of County Commissioners declined the NAA’s offer to hold a joint workshop, saying it wasn’t interested in discussing moving the airport, and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida noted environmental and ecological reasons, such as panthers, make the four potential sites not feasible.

Council chambers were packed with residents and groups that wanted to present their positions during the joint workshop. Quiet Florida, Old Naples Association and Reduce Jet Noise Naples focused on noise, health and safety. They cited the impact of noise on health, including delayed cognitive development in children, hypertension, heart disease and failure, arrhythmia and strokes.

They asked to improve residents’ quality of life by reducing noise, moving the two flight schools—Rexair and Naples Flight Center — to Immokalee Regional Airport, moving some flights to Immokalee, Page Field or RSW Airport in Fort Myers and ending or amending the airport’s lease when it expires in 2068. One speaker suggested eliminating unleaded gas discounts to discourage planes from using the airport.

Several residents and groups contended the airport’s growth, increased volume and flights pose a health and safety risk, especially to children, while Reduce Jet Noise Naples asked to ban stage-3 aircraft, implement no-fly zones over downtown during events and concerts and prohibit touch-and-goes, an exercise to practice takeoffs and landings. It suggested not pursuing FAA grants and ending the lease, and noted the airport, ranked the 14th busiest small airport nationwide, has had 123,171 operations this year, compared to 21-square-mile RSW, which had 87,685 last year.

On the other side was Friends of Naples Municipal Airport, which presented the airport’s business interests. Its president, Elite Jets VP Stephen Myers, noted many suggestions aren’t allowed legally and that the Federal Aviation Administration has ultimate control, not Council or the NAA. He noted Rexair doesn’t even perform touch-and-goes there.

And NAA Executive Director Chris Rozansky said the facility has fewer flight schools after one left for Page Field, finding Naples Airport wasn’t conducive to training. He estimated the airport was at 75-80% of its capacity and said residents need to understand some flights are services, such as Rexair, which has a Florida Fish & Wildlife contract to conduct wildlife tracking in the Everglades.

In the end, everyone agreed more work was needed, including asking for a ranking of the proposed sites and solutions to reduce noise and lead gas.

NAA Attorney Peter Kirsch recommended that if anyone has a member of the United States Congress on speed dial or in their Rolodex, to reach out for assistance. “That’s a good place to start,” Kirsch said, noting the NAA and airport management already did that.

Ruppert said the joint meeting allowed everyone to identify “points of commonality,” what was needed and how to proceed.

“We’re aligned more than we’re different,” Ruppert said. “… We want to do the best we can as soon as we can, because the noise does in fact bother people and we’re all in agreement with that and we want to mitigate that.”

This story was published in The Naples Press on Nov. 15