Aerotropolis needs more lift if it is to really take off.
We have had our questions about it, but it’s hard to have any questions about the facts: Memphis International Airport is our largest economic engine, FedEx is our largest employer, and logistics-related companies are the industry sector that sets us apart when compared to other major metros.
So, why is the Memphis International Airport experience so lacking?
Welcome Mat
If you’re welcoming someone to Memphis for the first time, a big decision for us is to decide how to drive them downtown to their hotel without making them write our city off in the first 15 minutes here.
If you’re someone who’s recruiting a company to Memphis because of the easy access to the overnight air delivery company that invented modern world commerce, the airport environs do nothing to convince you that this is the FedEx of cities.
If you’re someone who’s entertaining an international visitor attracted by the resonance of Memphis, the reality of the airport area undercuts the message about our authenticity, our distinctiveness, and our pride.
If you’re someone who’s looking to invest in a logistics company, the dismal condition of Lamar Avenue sends the message that we are adept at talking the talk but walking the walk is something else altogether.
Racing Ahead
We wrote when Memphis International Airport rushed to brand itself as aerotropolis that there were risks. If we’re going to invest our city’s most important economic asset into a buzzword brand, we have to be committed to making the aerotropolis happen.
The Greater Memphis Chamber has done as much as it can to move the project ahead, but implementation of a development project with equal parts economic development and community development really isn’t in its wheelhouse. With no implied criticism of the Chamber intended, perhaps it’s time to move decisively out of the incubation and foundational stages and for aerotropolis to have its own nonprofit organization like our competition. As the project moves past the incubation stage and into the execution stage, it should have its own home and its own structure of support and broad-based leadership that can move it on the top of the local economic agenda.
We are in a race. We don’t own the aerotropolis concept, and other cities are taking decidedly decisive actions to get there ahead of us. At times, it almost seems like we’re resting on our laurels as this hemisphere’s #1 cargo airport and as home to FedEx while other cities are buying up property, developing specific, measurable strategic plans, and putting together regional collaborations that are producing significant momentum.
As Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has said, Memphis has no margin for error and that it has to lever its unique assets for competitive advantage. It’s hard to put anything ahead of the Memphis airport as an economic asset and that’s why a full-bodied aerotropolis plan that is more action than brand is vital. It’s about more than the airport itself. It’s about the area around it and making the highest and best use of the land and buildings. It’s about the opportunity of the airport to be part of a true multi-modal center.
Acting Bold
We do in fact have the four R-s – runway, rail, road, and river – but the success of aerotropolis rests in doing more than marketing them. More to the point, it’s about delivering on the brand promise that Memphis International Airport set out when it labeled itself “America’s Aerotropolis.” The Airport Authority describes it this way: “It is the only airport in North America considered to be an ‘aerotropolis,’ an airport-integrated region extending outward from the airport in strings and clusters of airport-linked businesses and their associate residential complexes.”
Even for a public body that engages in hyperbole (think: last week’s comments by the authority chairman about Memphis being “overserved” by Delta and implying that we should be grateful for the highest fares in the country) but in setting out aerotropolis as the airport’s brand, the airport authority set a high bar that we have to clear or build on our reputation as a city that doesn’t quite ever get its act together.
It’s time for us to be audacious, focused, and unyielding to ensure its position as world headquarters for FedEx. (Click here if you want to see how out-of-date our airport is.) If FedEx were an airport, it most surely wouldn’t be ours, and because of it, we should at least give as much thought and energy into considering how Memphis can have a more modern airport that meets the standards expected by today’s travelers.
In an industry where high ceilings, wide halls, and lots of natural light are common place, Memphis International Airport is just the opposite, and because of it, it fails to measure up. Coupled with the way that the view of the noteworthy architecture of the airport has been blocked, it’s time to re-think the airport and what it would be if it were “the FedEx of U.S. airports.”
Getting Serious
FedEx’s three-hub strategic plans should be reason enough for us to elevate our game and to make the most of the opportunity to establish an international platform without peer. If we don’t, we may wake one day and find that Memphis International Airport is the home base for FedEx’s fleet in name only, because most of the plans have been moved to other airports and cities – think Indianapolis – that are actively engaged in creating the infrastructure – and the civic will – that portend a better future.
It’s time to quit patting ourselves on the back and scheduling media events and get down to the hard work of realizing the aerotropolis’ promise, because if we’re not willing to go all in, we should move on to other things with the honest realization that we have made the decision to move even farther down the bottom rungs of most economic indicators.
We need an economic development plan that fits a global strategy, and if we are unwilling to invest in the future of the Memphis region, how can we expect businesses to invest here? If we are not willing to take a leap of faith about our future, there’s no reason anyone else will be optimistic about us. If we don’t do something dramatic, we should learn to be content with the crumbs left on the table by other cities.
It was this make or break moment in the history of the Memphis region that heightens our concern about the MPO’s 2040 Long Range Transportation Plan, because if we continue our failure to understand that transportation and economic expansion are tightly interwoven and that sprawl is not economic growth, 2040 will be characterized by nothing as much as how irrelevant we have become in the highly competitive global economy.
And we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
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For starters, we should retool the airport authority. Some of its members have been on the authority way too long; the chairman is going into his 16th year. In other words, we need new leadership with the energy and vision to carry out the aerotropolis plan. The airport authority is stale.
Who, specifically, is dropping the ball on this?
The problem is that a tight group of people found their way into the cockpit and just started calling themselves pilots. No knowledge of how to create a community vision or implement an economic development plan but with all the backing they need to rent a plane and buy uniforms with little stars and eagles pinned on them so they feel in charge.
In less than four years, while these “community leaders” have been fiddling with the controls and making whooshing sounds… one of their companies vacated 240,000 square feet of class A office space next to the airport relocating to the Southwind area. Another negotiated a healthy package and great fanfare to LEAVE airport-city for downtown. A third company “very committed” to aerotropolis moved all of its executives to Goodlet Farms. While others at the table just so happen to be with real estate companies with interest in some of the moves.
With a few exceptions, most involved get more and more lost the farther they drive from Ridgeway… why should we expect them to have the slightest understanding of how industrial, office, retail, tourism or residential development in Whitehaven, on Airways or anywhere else off the Poplar Corridor impacts the region?
The team charged (by themselves I guess) with dealing with this went through two executive directors in less than three years. The Chamber hired someone to officially staff all of the aerotroplois region and was relieved earlier this year.
Some background through a 2009 update summary is on the Chamber website.
A cynical person would think this is all a bait-&-switch trick to divert attention, but the original aero plan/idea might be one of the most inspiring economic development studies ever created for this community. And, the area close to the airport is one of the most complicated. SCM is right to recognize (directly or indirectly) that it might be time to change the players at the table and find some real pilots to get this thing off the ground.
Memphis’ airport sucks by comparison
While the Airport Authority might be the figurehead of the aerotropolis concept, the actual execution and implementation goes way beyond a modernized concourse. True realization is found in the reform and redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhoods. The MSCAA’s greatest role in realizing this potential is to leverage its extensive landholdings (a resource due in part to required buyout due to noise levels) to create the neighborhoods and districts that will in turn serve as home to air dependent business and employers. The effort extends beyond this limited area. Aggressive efforts should be made to reorient and redevelop the area bounded by I-240 on the north, Winchester to the south, I-55 to the west and the airport itself to the east. This area with its unparalleled access to the freeway network and the airport is a prime location for a new “airport city”. This goal should be pursued as aggressively as required through a focused and detailed plan for the area, strong leadership, and through measures ranging from code enforcement to an active demolition program.
The area surrounding the airport needs to become a TIF district. I believe this will help get the ball rolling.
We are in a SOS situation with the airport. Current leadership is stale. But how do we change leadership when the CEO of the airport was just named to be the President of the Chamber. These are incestuous relationships that smack of small town cronyism.
I challenge Smart City – tell us how long the heads of the Louisville, Nashville, Dallas, Washington DC or Cincinnati airport authorities, tourism boards and chambers served. Then compare that to our local talent. Then do something simple and look at the web sites of the other cities (chamber, airport, tourism) and ask how do they compare?
We are in danger of loosing the Amsterdam flight – the summer schedule that is posted still has the flight at only four days a week (but Seattle service is back for summer). The Amsterdam flight has shown to have a huge economic impact. What are we doing to save it? Marketing it to the region? No Building relationships with the city of Amsterdam in both business and the arts? No. Asking local business to make sure they use the Memphis non-stop when traveling to Europe? Not so much.
Last note we don’t have a upscale Airport hotel and I doubt that anyone is working on securing us one.
Memphis’ airport did poorly on a national assessment of decent quality of food as well…but Hartsfield-Jackson was the worst, but that’s understandable when you know who is winning service contracts to serve the garbage food and unhealthy choices..but Memphis’ airport food choices are very very bad I think anywaay
Actually, the food category is one area where apparently Memphis Int’l is doing well, at least according to several national publications.