Randy Garrison, who owns the Printery, pointed out a stretch of open fields that will be the town's new $4 million, 4,700-foot airstrip. Garrison is also director of the county-owned airport.
“Look at that windsock. This was the best place in the 1930s, and it's the best today,” Garrison said.
“It's one piece of the puzzle,” Garrison said.
It's also another example of how Montana often runs counter to national trends. General aviation airports in the state are booming, while across most of the nation, they are on the decline as cities and counties sell off the valuable flat land for development, said Chris Dancy, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
For most of the past decade, general aviation airports closed at a rate of two a month. It's the single biggest issue for the nonprofit AOPA.
“It has slowed some, but the trend is still down,” Dancy said last week.
Airfields may be closing, but general aviation manufacturers in general had their best year ever in 2005, said Katie Pribyl of the Washington, D.C.-based General Aviation Manufacturers Association.
“The economy is good. A lot of people are flying airplanes,” she said. General aviation contributes about $41 billion to the national economy every year.
The same national causes - increasing development and rising land values - have had the opposite effect in Montana, said Debbie Alke, head of the Montana Aeronautics Division.
Development has meant more demand for airports that hadn't seen much change over the past 70 or 80 years, Alke said.
The towns are as different as Stevensville and Broadus. Generally speaking, the reasons cited for airport expansion in the state follow a pattern. Access to medical care is a big one. Most small airports cannot land fixed-wing medical airplanes. The seasonal battles against wildfires are also commonly cited.
The Thompson Falls airport, also owned by Sanders County, expanded to allow parents of children at a private reform school to more easily fly jets into the remote area to visit their children, Alke said.
Finally, there are the air tourists.
“It is dollars to the community - fuel sales, hotels, people buying homes and staying,” she said.
Another factor was a change in funding after 2001. Instead of shouldering 90 percent of the cost, the FAA takes care of 95 percent. The Aeronautics Division gives grants for another piece, too.
The FAA has been funneling about $10 million a year to the state in general aviation grants for at least the past five years, according to the agency's data. The money is not general tax dollars but rather comes from fuel taxes and other user fees.
In the case of the Plains airport, Sanders County will have to pay only about $100,000 of the construction costs.
The original airfield in Plains, population about 1,200, was built as a public works project in the 1930s, Garrison said.
Across the railroad tracks from the local hospital, with its fresh $8 million addition, sits the original wooden hangar, its walls silver with age. Across an access road is the second dilapidated hangar. Those will be replaced with new ones, Garrison said.
Raised in Plains, Garrison always loved to fly, he said. He worked for a time as a photographer for the local newspaper. About two decades ago, he bought the local print shop and has worked there ever since. He became director of the airport about 18 years ago.
All his life, traffic at the airfield has been on the increase. The field had about 1,300 flights last year, he said.
“We get a lot of people, especially in the summer,” Garrison said, even though the 3,000-foot paved runway can accommodate only small private aircraft. He has been working to get a longer airfield since the late 1990s.
“I won't say it's been easy,” Garrison said. But waiting longer would have been harder. Sanders County only had to work with three landowners to get the required 125 acres.
“When I was a kid, everything you see wasn't there,” Garrison said, pointing to a developed bench north of the Clark Fork River lowlands.
Garrison has met newcomers to the area who commute by plane every week to jobs in Seattle or elsewhere along the West Coast.
“There's a lot of people moving in,” he said. “It means jobs. In a town like this, we need every job we can get.”
Reporter Robert Struckman can be reached at 523-5262 or at rstruckman@missoulian.com
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