Port authority to consider hiring of airport marketing coordinator
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
The Western Reserve Port Authority, at today’s 8:30 a.m. meeting at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, will consider the hiring of a marketing coordinator to communicate with airlines and the public and carry out the airport’s marketing plan.
Dan Dickten, director of aviation, said he has interviewed several people for the job and may be close to a decision on who to hire. The job will pay about $32,000 annually under a one-year contract.
A five-page draft marketing plan Dickten has written lays out marketing goals: “to regain local travelers and to invite general aviation [privately-owned or corporate aircraft] services development.” It has a goal of regaining a 35 percent share of the market of airline customers, a high percentage of whom now use other regional airports.
The marketing plan includes promotion of the airport as an air-cargo “inland port” to handle the air-cargo needs of local businesses and aggressive promotion of the airport as a “convenient, reliable, cost-competitive regional alternative to [other nearby airports] as the preferred and convenient facility.”
The plan mentions engaging travel agencies in that effort and getting the public to take ownership “of the air-service problem and its solutions.”
It talks about creation of a Fare Equalization Committee using Youngstown State University student interns to complete a monthly fare analysis among the airlines serving the local airport and the airports in the region.
The plan suggests the use of radio and television, billboards, promotions and open houses.
The eight-member port-authority board also will be asked to commit $200,000 in matching money that would be used if the port authority is successful in securing a $1 million grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
The $1 million would be used to create a revolving loan fund to provide money for cleanup of brownfield sites in Mahoning and Trumbull counties so they can be re-used for commerce or industry.
The U.S. EPA approved a $600,000 port authority grant last summer to allow the port authority to determine what industrial properties — mostly in the Golden Triangle area of Howland and Warren — should be cleaned up for re-use.
The port authority also will be asked to approve $26,500 to conduct asbestos assessment and asbestos removal, demolition and removal of the former Airport Inn next to the airport on Route 193 and to spend $35,000 to replace a tractor used for airfield maintenance.