Published July 2005

Commercial flights at Paine:
less traffic, more jobs
— and Vegas

This column has featured the subject of expanding commercial service at the Paine Field airport three times in the past. As a rule, you don't recycle the same subject too often if you expect to write a column people will read. But with editorials, letters to the editor, and general street chatter now building again, it deserves another look.

There is a contrarian viewpoint to those opposing commercial service at Paine Field concerned about the value of their homes going down: Unless you are almost directly underneath a 30-year-old jumbo jet taking off, your home value will probably increase in value if commercial service opens at Paine Field.

With jets today so much quieter than 30 years ago, "underneath" is a much smaller area. In fact, demand for a home in a quality area like Mukilteo or Harbor Pointe that could offer a 10-minute drive to a serviceable airport will be viewed by the buyer market as a positive. Snowbirds, for example, might flock (no pun intended) to live in south Snohomish County, where they can easily fly back and forth to Arizona and Palm Springs in the winter.

To the rest of the north Puget Sound, the benefit is seen in three places: traffic mitigation, new jobs and Vegas. Well, I'm having some fun with the last one. But it's true. It turns out that non-stops to Vegas from Everett likely have the most draw based on today's sense of market demand, according to a recent survey.

Don't see yourself taking the Las Vegas flight? Then the benefits in traffic mitigation and job creation are most appealing to you.

On traffic, statistics provided by Snohomish County show that approximately 10 percent of the I-5 traffic between Snohomish and King County is tied to Sea-Tac in some way. Ten percent! People coming and going on flights, people picking people up, people having meetings in hotels near the airport, etc. Almost 14,000 I-5 trips a day between Snohomish and King County are tied to Sea-Tac in some fashion.

Not all of them would go away if we opened up Paine Field to commercial service. International flights and cross-country flights, for example, would no doubt still be centered on Sea-Tac for the foreseeable future. But a sizable chunk of traffic would no longer clog I-5 if people could catch a flight at Paine Field. That's a benefit to everyone in the north Puget Sound region who uses I-5.

The business opportunities and jobs we've not been able to win in Snohomish County because of the distance and "hassle factor" to Sea-Tac have gone largely unnoticed. But they are significant for those of us who try to compete in the market every day. Often, an out-of-state company looking to set up an office to expand business in the Puget Sound has executives or sales staff who travel by air a great deal. If all things are equal in terms of space to lease or buy between a south-end or a north-end location, the hassle factor of getting to and from the airport can be the difference maker.

The good news for supporters of commercial service is that getting a carrier to commit may be closer than people think. Despite the anemia in the airline industry today, groups of business leaders are working to attract the attention of airlines. Not the big airlines that are currently in or hovering close to bankruptcy, but regional carriers who are modeled for the current market conditions and airports like Paine Field.

Most of the preliminary thoughts are that flights to and from Las Vegas (I'm serious this time), San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Phoenix and maybe Portland have the best chance of making it. The airline that steps up first would likely create a loyal customer base, and new customers would be willing to make a switch solely due to the convenience factor.

There are 1.5 million of us living within a 45-minute drive to Paine Field. For satellite airports (think John Wayne south of LAX or San Jose in the Bay Area), they need at least that sort of population density to make a go of it.

The reality is that those opposing commercial service might want to keep their organization together, anyway. In an irony of ironies, they might find themselves needing that same unified voice to fight against increased property taxes that come from higher — not lower — property values.

Tom Hoban is CEO of Everett-based Coast Real Estate Services, a property management and real estate advisory company; call 425-339-3638 or e-mail tomhoban@coastmgt.com.

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