Dallas Love Field is in for a makeover in its post-Wright amendment future.
With the looming expiration of flight restrictions, city officials are weighing alternatives to develop city-owned land at Love Field. They hope to turn today’s misused real estate into tomorrow’s boosted development.
“I believe that there is inefficient use of space at Dallas Love Field,” said Dallas aviation director Mark Duebner.
City officials are focusing on how to better use underutilized space at an airport bounded on all sides by residential neighborhoods.
“Because space is limited, being efficient on how that space is used is our focus,” Duebner said.
He said the airport needs to first accommodate the growth that’s expected to come after the Wright amendment flight restrictions are lifted in October.
While early forecasts of traffic growth at Love vary greatly, airlines are already selling tickets on dozens of new flights.
Southwest Airlines has announced plans to add several dozen nonstop flights to 17 cities after Oct. 13. Between October and February, Virgin America will begin 18 daily flights from the airport. United Airlines, which controls two of Love’s 20 gates, has yet to lay out its post-Wright plans.
Non-aviation revenue
The recently updated master plan for the airport outlines development options to meet passenger demand. The city is hoping to cash in on that growth.
“The No. 1 goal is to create some non-aeronautical revenue,” Duebner said.
Duebner said retail and commercial development on the periphery of the airport could boost revenue. For example, he said, neighbors in the Lemmon Avenue area are hoping for retail development such as restaurants.
“They wanted lower-scale things along the flavor of what’s on Lovers Lane,” Duebner said. “They just didn’t want to see any big, hulking office buildings or big-box retail.”
Two options in the master plan call for retail and hotel development on the airport’s property bordering Lemmon Avenue.
Hammond Perot, an assistant director of the city’s office of economic development, said a few businesses have approached the city about retail opportunities in that area. He declined to name any of them because no deals have been reached.
Duebner said the city is looking at decommissioning Runway 18-36, which runs north-south and intersects the busy Denton Drive runway and the Lemmon Avenue runway.
Thirteen acres on the northernmost part of the airport’s property could be open for development if that happened, according to the master plan. Aviation service companies already operating at the airport could expand into that area. Those companies provide maintenance, fueling and hangar space for private aviators.
“We will work with companies who are on the airport already and looking to do projects that would expand their operations,” said Perot.
The city is also considering the construction of parking and rental car structures, with the possibility of a rooftop hotel, to the southeast of the main terminal, according to the updated master plan.
Perot said his office will focus on the spillover effect that increased airport traffic will have on development in the surrounding areas.
“You leverage the activity of the airport, off the airport,” Perot said.
Values on rise in area
Mike Turner of J. Elmer Turner Realtors Inc. said real estate values and interest in the area are already trending up.
“There’s a lot of interest in that Maple Avenue corridor and Stemmons corridor” south and west of Love Field, said Turner.
But he said there are limits to how development will spread beyond the airport’s property.
“It’s going to be difficult to have the commercial development encroach into residential neighborhoods because of the protective measures in place and the neighborhood associations,” Turner said.
“I think that we shouldn’t see an erosion of the neighborhood,” he said.
Duebner said that whatever the final scope of passenger and developmental growth, the city of Dallas will be the beneficiary.
Business travelers “are going to stay in the heart of Dallas,” he said. “That’s going to mean real dollars back to the city.”
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