New hangar for air ambulance could lead to more land available beside the airport

By Collin Gallant on December 15, 2017.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

The possibility of a new hangar at the Medicine Hat Regional Airport could jump start a move to make more runway-adjacent land available for aircraft, officials said Thursday.

A city committee heard this week that a tentative land lease with incoming air-ambulance provider CanWest could result in that company building on a one-acre plot to the west of an existing hangar row.

However a total of nine acres of bare land are available in that area and the block would be bisected by a proposed taxi-way needed for CanWest operations that will begin next year.

As well, utility service lines will also be pushed into the parcel, making further extensions easier and cheaper.

“It works really well and could allow us to do somethings there that we’ve wanted to,” said John Bulmer, the city’s urban development engineer in the land and properties office.

He says over the past few years airport management has been approached by individuals seeking hanger space or lots to build storage bays.

But, without an overarching plan for how development should proceed, it didn’t.

Last March however, the land department proposed a phased approach to developing, focusing on smaller areas and proceeding in stages more land at the airfield to fulfill a council mandate to boost business opportunities at the facility.

It proposed working to market publicly accessible commercial development land next year, then begin site clearing to the east of the terminal to remediate long demolished hangar sites.

Bulmer said his office is still planning to bring on commercial lots totalling four to six acres in late 2018, but is also examining how to proceed with new hangar land on the eastside.

“We’re working on two sides at the same time, but it’s nice to have some activity happening there,” he said.

A proposed lease with CanWest was negotiated by airport managers and was presented to the development and infrastructure committee this week. It will now move to city council’s Dec. 18 meeting for final approval.

The hangar would be located on presently bare land southwest of the existing hangars, directly across from an Integra facility and connected by a new taxiway.

Annual rent on the land — airport land is not sold — would be $18,750 per year. Based on the assessed value of the land, $229,000 per acre, that equates to a 7.5 per cent return on its value.

Development and building permits still need to be issued, but company officials have told the News they would begin applications as soon as the lease was in place.

At that rate, substantial construction could begin in the late winter or early spring of 2018.

The issue of how Medicine Hat would be folded into a move to a province-wide contract for a single air ambulance provider had become a political football this summer.

The matter was debated in the provincial legislature and local politicians wondered how a company without a local facility could provide seamless changeover from long-time local provider, Integra.

Last month, city council received official word from the province that CanWest would take over fixed-wing transportation of patients.

Councillors at that time said it was now time to work with CanWest to see the best local service provided.