Wednesday, February 7, 2007

FAA: Willis hasn?t sought airport papers


By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

Despite indications last year he might seek to build an airport in Camas County, actor and part-time Hailey resident Bruce Willis has yet to make a move toward requesting and completing paperwork necessary for permission to build a field east of the city of Fairfield, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said Monday.

Willis owns acreage in Camas County. But according to county records, his tract isn't anywhere near the size of a proposed new airport in southern Blaine County to be built by the city of Hailey and Blaine County through its Friedman Memorial Airport Authority, one perhaps as large as 1,200 acres.

A former Friedman board member and ex-county commissioner, Mary Ann Mix, accompanied Willis to a meeting with Northwest Region FAA officials in Renton, Wash., last July to discuss steps the FAA would require to build an airport. Mix has not responded to requests from the Mountain Express for comments on the status of Willis' plans, if any.

A Willis-built airport, if one materialized, would likely be designed to attract visitors to his Soldier Mountain Ski Area. However, some doubts have been expressed that Willis' vision for a facility would be large enough or have sophisticated instrument landing systems to handle anything larger than medium-size corporate jets, and would not be attractive to airlines.

When an area east of Fairfield was designated as a finalist site in a yearlong process to choose a locale for a new airport to replace Friedman Memorial, it picked up significant opposition from Camas County residents as well as from some aviation experts who declared the area's winter fog would virtually prohibit operations.

The location also is farther from site No. 10 in southern Blaine County. Site No. 10 was finally picked for a proposed new airfield, which cost the Camas County site any support from business interests in the Wood River Valley.




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