Tacoma will write its final chapter in a 45-year history of Tacoma Narrows Airport when the City Council votes Tuesday to transfer ownership of the airport to Pierce County.

Let the record show that Tacoma’s policymakers wasted a valuable economic asset.

Two previously unidentified private investment groups – one backed by one of America’s richest men – pushed to buy the airport or lease it for up to 99 years under a Federal Aviation Administration program to privatize municipal airports, according to e-mails and documents obtained in a records request from City Hall.

Bruce McCaw, a collector of vintage aircraft whose King County family pioneered cell phone technology, had partnered with Clay Lacy, owner of Clay Lacy Aviation, headquartered in Van Nuys, Calif. Clay Lacy Aviation has an aircraft service center at Seattle’s Boeing Field. Lacy and McCaw served together on the board of trustees for Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

The other interested group included investors from Pierce County, led by Jeff Brown, president of Tacoma architectural firm BCRA; Eric LeMay, nephew of Harold LeMay of the garbage-hauling empire and car museum; Gene Hassing, vice president of Environmental Solutions Inc. in Gig Harbor; and real estate investors Homer Dodge and Harvey Widman.

Both groups would have pursued expansion of flight traffic, a longer runway and redevelopment plans for the airport and land around it to create an economy-boosting business and residential village worth untold millions and hundreds of jobs.

McCaw’s group would have sought to return passenger airlines – possibly Horizon Airlines – to the airport as a way to relieve some air traffic pressure on Sea-Tac Airport, said Mike Slevin, Tacoma’s interim public works director.

That’s not a foreign notion. Tacoma Narrows opened in 1963 as destination for passenger planes for now-defunct Western Airlines.

Beyond those two well-organized proposals, Tacoma received at least six other unsolicited private inquiries about the airport. One from California Business Systems sought to lengthen the runway and create a passenger jet maintenance center where empty jets fly in for repairs. Another proposal from Jenamar, a California developer, sought to create an extensive senior residential village around Tacoma’s undeveloped land at the Madrona Links Golf Course.

None of them ever got a real chance.

A shift to private airport ownership would have meant navigating a seldom-used, cumbersome federal process. Meanwhile, when Pierce County officials learned private investors wanted to take over and expand airport operations, the county suddenly jumped back into the bargaining to buy the airport.

The county’s prime proponent, Councilman Terry Lee, represents the area around the airport and the loudest voices in his constituency oppose any expansion that means bigger planes and more noisy landings and takeoffs.

Consequently, the transfer plan already approved by Pierce County and on the City Council’s agenda Tuesday will shift ownership to the county and set aside much of the undeveloped area for passive recreational use overseen by the Peninsula Metropolitan Park District.

The transfer plan amounts to a meager benefit for a few compared to the loss of a potential economic windfall for the region.

Ultimately, Tacoma didn’t have the stomach to push against Pierce County. The city has a plateful of other issues to negotiate with the county – ownership of Cheney Stadium and the County-City Building being two big ones – and no one wanted differences over the airport’s future to stand in the way.

Besides, since the county, not the city, collects the sales taxes and property taxes from the airport area, Tacoma would have had to do all the hard work for a fraction of the direct return through lease payments from a private operator. Tacoma failed to grasp the bigger picture – that a vibrant destination airport would bring more people to Tacoma’s hotels, shopping malls, attractions and restaurants.

Too bad for the region. Too bad for us.

BCRA’s Brown, who pitched one of the privatization proposals, said last week that his group felt Tacoma never gave it a fair hearing.

“The vision we had was for … a nice boutique airport,” Brown said. “There have been some developments all over the country that have been successful, around these airports, with opportunities for supporting uses – private hangars, restaurants, little communities where people can live, work and fly. They’re more or less self-contained.

“We made several proposals to the city. They were received. But there didn’t appear to be a real process for vetting them out,” Brown said.

Why not? Because Tacoma didn’t really want to deal with private investors.

The Public Works and Legal departments prepared a request for proposals from private investors. But when Public Works staff members asked City Manager Eric Anderson for authorization to issue it, he told them no, according to e-mails.

Instead, according to a staff member involved in the issue, the city publicly played up a potential sale to private investors and the possible expansion of airport operations as a ploy to get Pierce County back to the bargaining table.

Not that long ago, in the mid-1990s, Tacoma had a coalition of forward-thinking elected officials and executive leaders who operated with the stated philosophy: “Think Big. Plan Fast. Act Now.” Their written priorities centered on economic development initiatives that provided a financial return on investment. Because they realized that to provide civic services and amenities citizens demand, they needed to grow the tax-generating base.

Thinking big requires bold initiative, hard work and some risk. Thinking small, as Tacoma has done with Tacoma Narrows Airport, yields small results.

Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785

dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com