The former Hawker Beechcraft complex at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field, once feared to be a white elephant for the state's largest airport, is turning into a cash generator.
Airport officials are set to sign three more leases on space in the complex, which now is marketed as the Airport Business Park. Two of the leases are, for now, temporary expansions for existing tenants while the third is for the park's first non-aviation tenant, Kiewit Infrastructure South of Fort Worth.
And for the first time since Hawker Beechcraft, an aircraft maker, vacated the complex six years ago, all six buildings totaling about 400,000 square feet have tenants leasing portions or all of them.
"We're very pleased," Bryan Malinowski, the airport's executive director, said Tuesday after a Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission committee recommended the leases to the full commission.
Airport officials initially hoped to find another aircraft maker or similar aviation company to take over the complex, given how specialized the complex was. Hawker Beechcraft used the complex as a completion center for its line of Hawker business jets, creating the need for a hangar specially outfitted to paint aircraft.
But they soon realized that the complex, once valued at $60 million, should be marketed as a multi-tenant facility. The strategy has worked.
In addition to Kiewit, tenants include a general aviation fixed-base operator now known as Lynx, a maintenance base for Envoy Air, and Afterglow, a company that refurbishes aircraft.
Both Lynx and Envoy are expanding.
Lynx was the first tenant at the complex with its predecessor, Fly Arkansas, leasing space in 2015. Lynx acquired Fly Arkansas in 2018.
Lynx now leases two buildings totaling about 56,000 square feet. It wants to add an additional 15,507 square feet of hangar space in Building 300 for aircraft storage.
Envoy, a subsidiary of American Airlines, began leasing the north hangar bay of Building 200 in 2017 to use as a maintenance base to support its fleet of Embraer 175 regional jets. The maintenance base employs about 60 people.
The airport spent almost $900,000 to modify the hangar doors and make other improvements to accommodate Envoy's needs. State incentives covered $500,000 of the cost.
Envoy now wants a temporary lease on the building's south hangar bay totaling 37,000 square feet.
Kiewit Infrastructure South will become the sole tenant of the only building in the complex that has sat unused since Hawker Beechcraft closed its operations at Clinton National.
Kiewit wants to sign a four-year lease beginning in January. The company is part of a joint venture with Massman Construction Co. of Kansas City, Mo., awarded a contract to remake the Interstate 30 corridor through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock, including building a new bridge over the Arkansas River.
Assuming the commission approves the leases next week, the airport income will total about $1.2 million annually from the complex, which is twice the amount the airport received when Hawker Beechcraft was the sole tenant, according to figures provided by Clinton National Airport.
Of the roughly 400,000 square feet of space available in the Airport Business Park, slightly less than 190,000 square feet will be under lease.
Business on 11/13/2019