San Bernardino International Airport
Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:36 pm
Didn't think the U.S. actually had its own version of South Madrid Airport, but apparently we do:
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/economy/2014/ ... a/?slide=2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;It’s not every day that you get to walk into a brand new, empty airport terminal, but I got a recent tour of the San Bernardino International Airport.
Last month, San Bernardino officials showed off the airport's new international arrivals terminal. It represents the last phase of a $200 million effort to convert the former Norton Air Force Base into a regional airport that commercial airlines can use. The problem so far: commercial airlines haven't shown up to use it...
...Norton Air Force Base officially closed on the site 10 years ago. The effort to convert the base into a regional airport has drawn on federal, state, and local tax dollars - and has been turbulent. Nearly three years ago, the FBI served warrants on the airport authority over questionable finances and raided the offices of the airport’s developer Scot Spencer. Spencer was arrested last year on charges of defrauding the airport authority.
"It’s a $200 million boondoggle, which is not likely to create jobs now or in the future," said former San Bernardino City Councilman and County Supervisor Neil Derry in an interview with KPCC. Local officials, said Derry, saw business booming ten years ago at nearby Ontario International Airport and believed a San Bernardino airport could compete.
"The idea that we (San Bernardino), with one runway, could compete with Ontario, which is right down the road, has direct freeway access, is easy to get to when San Bernardino Airport is difficult to get to, the idea that we could compete with them borderlines on lunacy," Derry said. "I don’t even think twenty or thirty years from now that it will be operating as an airport."
