Longmont’s Vance Brand airport celebrates its 70th birthday

On Oct. 28, 1945, Governor John C. Vivian stood on a makeshift stage three miles west of city limits and declared the spot the new location of the Longmont Municipal Airport.

This year, the airport will celebrate its 70th birthday with a celebration on Saturday. Mayor Dennis Coombs is also set to sign a proclamation on Tuesday declaring Oct. 28 as Vance Brand Municipal Airport Commemorative Day.

Paul Kugel told the Times-Call in 1988 that he remembered the 1945 dedication ceremony. At the time, Kugel said, a Piper J-3 Cub plane and a few Cessna 140s and 120s had helped train about 400 private pilots in the tail-end of World War II out near Colo. 66.

The city, Kugel said, made a swap and acquired the land where the airport still stands today.

“The city loaned us a motor grader,” Kugel said about the construction of the dirt runway in 1945. “And we graded the runway.”

The airport started off modestly in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. In 1959, the airport laid gravel and chip-sealed the runway, using its first ever federal grant.

A story from the Times-Call archives notes that the airport was in the red $1,230 in 1966 and $5,098 in 1967.

‘A lot of the farmers had their own runway’

Charles Klarich, who was city manager from 1964 to 1979 said the airport was small in the early to mid-60s.

“We had one runway and a little cubicle for the operations, which wasn’t much in those days,” Klarich said. “The best I remember, all the farms around here, a lot of the farmers had their own runway on their own farm and they were kind of the first customers of the city airport.”

But in the late ’60s, the airport really started to take off.

By 1967, two businesses were operating out of the airport and providing aeronautical services and by 1968, there were 80 airplanes stationed at the airport, with a new hangar housing the Judson Flying Service.

“Airport Usage Increases More Than 50 Per Cent” boasts a March 1968 Times-Call headline.

Then-volunteer airport manager Reed Walker said there were plans in the works to improve the now solvent airport with more ramps and taxiways, storage hangars and an expanded runway plus some radio navigational facilities.

Klarich attributed the airport’s growth to more business coming into Longmont and the city’s involvement with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“From there it just progressed. People came in working for these big companies and they didn’t want their planes sitting out all winter, so that started the emphasis on building some buildings to store planes,” Klarich said.

In the ’70s, the city formed the precursor to the current Airport Advisory Board, then called a committee.

By this point, the airport was showing a profit between $4,000 and $7,000 each year and there was waiting list 40 planes long for hangars.

In 1975, the U.S. Department of Transportation released a study that predicted there would be 143 aircraft based at the airport by 1985. In 1977, the Longmont Municipal Airport far exceeded that number, with 175 airplanes based there and in the next year, a third business operating out of the airport was added.

A lifetime spent at the airport

Brian Pickerell, general manager of Elite Aviation, said he’s been coming to the airport since he was 5 years old in 1978.

Pickerell’s grandfather, Jim Pickerell, flew planes out of Longmont Municipal Airport in 1968 and his father was the head painter at Flying Colors Aircraft Painting that used to operate out of the airport.

Brian Pickerell got a job out of high school at the paint shop and came to work for Air/West Flight Center when the paint shop closed down.

He’s basically spent his life at the airport.

“If I could live on the airport, I probably would,” Pickerell said.

In the late ’80s, growth at the airport accelerated even faster. The city hired Walker as the first paid airport manager solely dedicated to the airport. Records indicate that previously, managing the airport was part of the Longmont transportation manager’s duties.

In August 1988, the airport began a $649,000 runway expansion project, lengthening the runway from its original 4,200 feet to 4,800 feet and widening it to 75 feet. The upgrade would allow 30,000-pound, single-gear aircraft to land at the airport and was partially funded with a $590,000 FAA grant.

In October 1988, the new runway was done and the airport had a new name — Vance Brand Municipal Airport after native son and renowned pilot and astronaut Vance Brand. Brand took his first flight in a Ford Tri-Motor in a field north of Longmont in the ’30s.

The next year, in 1989, the City Council approved annexing the 252-acre airport, doing it via a 20.6-acre flagpole annexation. In 1990, an expanding Longmont and a busier-than-ever airport caused the noise complaints to roll in. In response, the airport instituted voluntary noise abatement procedures for pilots to follow.

Larry Kuebrich, who owned Air/West Flight Center at the airport from 1991 to 2013 before he sold the business to Elite Aviation. Kuebrich still owns hangars at the airport today, said the ’90s were a good time for the airport. Hangars were going up fast because demand for them was high.

“The ’90s were a good economic time,” Kuebrich said. “The location is a big asset because we’re nestled against the foothills … and the weather here is a big plus. It’ gets cold, but not like the Midwest or the northern parts. The area is a economically strong area, with high-tech jobs and good salaries — ‘cuz flying’s not cheap.”

Hoping for continued development

Pickerell said he’s enjoyed seeing the community at the airport grow.

“Everyone on the airport knows each everyone else and we’d do anything for each other,” Pickerell said. “It’s pretty cool that the airport has been here 70 years. It’s definitely something to celebrate.”

Rob Cohen, who has been flying to Longmont from Estes Park for 25 years, said he also enjoyed the sense of community and felt that the airport has been an economic boon to the city.

“There are executives flying here that if they weren’t flying here, they’d be flying somewhere else,” Cohen said, adding that he had some errands to run in Longmont before heading home. “It brings a lot of people here that otherwise may not be here.”

Airport Manager David Slayter — whose post is now a full-time position — said that he hopes in the next 70 years, Vance Brand Municipal Airport continues to develop as a transportation hub.

“I hope it continues to support the business culture and have even more positive economic development growth for the community surrounding the airport while still having those key factors for aviation,” Slayter said.

Pickerell said he hopes in the next 70 years, the general public comes around and hangs out at the airport more often.

“The public is welcome to come out here and sit on the bench and just watch the airplanes,” Pickerell said. “They can find me and I’ll give them the grand tour.”

Karen Antonacci: 303-684-5226, antonaccik@times-call.com or twitter.com/ktonacci