PTI’s recent successes built on years of planning and re-imagining, expert says

This month, JetZero announced plans to hire more than 14,000 people to build a fuel-efficient blended-wing plane at Piedmont Triad International Airport. Last year, the airport landed Boom, which plans to build the first supersonic passenger jet in the U.S.

It took years of planning and a change of mindset for PTI to get those companies and more. That’s according to Keith Debbage, a retired professor of economic geography at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 

The idea was to put less emphasis on passenger travel and more on businesses that need access to an airport. The concept is known as an “aerotropolis.”

WFDD’s Paul Garber recently spoke with Debbage about PTI's road to success.

Interview highlights

On how PTI has been able to beat out other airports vying for the same businesses:

“I think a large part of this is grounded in a very steadfast and long-term vision over the past decade that the airport authority and all the leaders in the region have put together. You can't underestimate the ‘bridge to the future,’ — that is the bridge that crosses Bryan Blvd. just north of the airport. That bridge is only about just under 300 feet long, but it cost the state and the city $20 million to build it because it's capable of holding a jumbo jet… That bridge freed up 600 to 700 acres on the other side of Bryan Boulevard to attract companies that need huge acreage that is shovel-ready.” 

On the biggest challenges for the aerotropolis in the next decade:

“I'm not sure the planes will be in service for the dates that both companies have suggested, to be honest. So that's one issue. The other issue is housing. Even today, before all this capital investment fully washes over the Triad, we're struggling with appropriate price point housing stock .Yes, we have some large-scale residential developments that are being built, but it's hard to underemphasize how critically short we are when you consider that upwards of 50,000 new jobs are almost certain to happen if these two startups succeed. So I think really, the city and the counties need to really get together and think of ways to fast-track large-scale housing development projects out in the ‘burbs near these sorts of locations.” 

On managing the growth of the aerotropolis with the quality of life for people on the ground:

“I did the State of the City report for the chamber from 2003 to about 2016. And it was a dismal time for me, because I'm cranking through all the data, and the best I could come up with with a headline is ‘the state of the city was less than robust,’ because we had struggled mightily in the early 2000s trying to figure out our identity as tobacco, textiles and furniture fell by the wayside. For me, at least, it's a lot more fun to have problems of growth than to have problems of decline. Yes, we'll have land use conflict, we'll have noise issues.  But in reality, this is a much better problem than the problems we've had in the past.”