GREATER ORLANDO AVIATION AUTHORITY
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH ORLANDO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the Central Florida Development Committee -- led by Frank Hubbard, Senator Beth Johnson, Martin Andersen, some others and me -- saw the need for a new airport to serve the growing air transportation requirements of the Central Florida Community. The Committee studied several locations as far away as Melbourne but centered their attention on South Orange Blossom trail. Martin Andersen had objected to the South Orange Blossom Trail area because, he said, “It would make Conway Kittredge rich.”
At the time, airlines used propeller aircraft and operated at the Orlando Herndon Airport outside of downtown (todaycalled Orlando Executive Airport). It was named for AB (Pat) Herndon, the City Engineer.
McCoy Air Force Base
Around 1940, Orlando Mayor Billy Beardall led Orlando to purchase 600 acres of pasture-land south of the city near Pine Castle, and the property was later expanded to 1,240 acres. At the start of World War II, the Army Air Corp took over the municipal airport and the city used the Pine Castle acreage for municipal airport number two. The second airport became Pine Castle Army Airfield.
In the mid 1960’s, the need for an airport with runways long enough to accommodate the new jet aircraft became McCoy Air Force Base (a former SAC base) operated by the Air Force. It had two 12,000- foot runways and was an obvious solution to the problem. It had been a base for large bombers during and after World War II. The base, by the way, was named for Colonel Michael McCoy, who was piloting a bomber when the engine failed and he crashed in a non-populated area. The airlines entered into a joint operating agreement with the military that permitted limited jet service at the airport. Mayor Carl Langford was largely responsible for facilitating the use of the airport for commercial service.
A former missile building on the east side of the field became the commercial terminal. Delta Airlines was the first to begin jet operations at the airport (in 1962) with Eastern Airlines and National Airlines soon following. Southern Airways began operations at the airport when it received authorization from the CAB some years later. After lengthy negotiations with the air force and the construction of a connecting taxiway on the eastside, the airlines were granted unlimited use of the airport for jet operations, and they conducted dual operations using both airports until 1968 when the military began phasing out its use of McCoy.
Several modifications were made by the city and airlines to the terminal building to accommodate the needs of the city, airlines, and traveling public, in large part due to the opening of Disney World in 1971 and the economic growth occurring in Orlando. The improvements were financed with airport revenue bonds issued by the city and airlines’ landing fees. The airlines increased their landing fees in 1974 to allow the city to acquire the airport’s west side facilities when they were abandoned by the air force. To the extent that there were international flights, they were handled at a facility on the west side.
The Orlando City Council appointed an Advisory Board to oversee aviation matters. Bob Heinzlemen and Wally Sanderlin each served at one time as Chairman of the board. Edgerton Vanden Berg was the City Attorney and Wesley Fly was the financial advisor, John Meacham was the airport’s Executive Director, and John Wyckoff was a member of the staff. The airlines operated the airport under lease and use agreements with the city which were renegotiated annually to meet the financial needs of the airport. The Advisory Board hired a financial consultant to assist in these negotiations with the airlines which established terminal rentals, landing fees, and authorized certain capital improvements to be made by the city. As indicated below, Champ Williams had a long-term agreement to operate the restaurant concession in the terminal.
New Terminal
Since new terminals were being constructed at airports throughout the state of Florida (including Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale), the city decided that they should do the same at McCoy. The city hired consultants to develop a concept but its first proposal to build a facility based on the Dallas-Ft. Worth model was opposed by the airlines as both impractical and not financeable, and it was ultimately abandoned.
Serious negotiations with the airlines began in 1972 after a series of meetings held at the Polynesian Hotel at Disney World to develop a workable solution that could be placed on the shelf until traffic justified its construction. Airport consultantLeigh Fisher, helped by Justus Hellmuth, came up with the most acceptable concept. John Wyckoff helped with the design.
Greater Orlando Aviation Authority
Mayor Langford sent John Wyckoff to major airports throughout the United States and some foreign country countries to meet with management of those airports. He talked at length with them about the creation of an authority to manage airports, relations with airlines, and other issues. In 1975, the Orlando City Council decided to create the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority to operate the airport. After some controversy, the ordinance provided for the City Council rather than the mayor to appoint the members. The nine Authority members appointed by the City of Orlando for either two- or four-year terms were Wally Sanderlin, Chairman; Harry Bower, CPA; Sherman Dantzler, President of The First Federal; Jim Greene; Nap Ford, City Commissioner; George Stuart; Ben Benham; Dennis McNamara, and Mayor Carl Langford. One member was also a City Commissioner and one was a County Commissioner. The airport was leased by the city to the Authority under a long-term lease agreement.
John Wyckoff
John Wyckoff was a valuable asset to the Advisory Board and later to the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority as a staff member and then as Executive Director. One of the pieces of advice he gave me was to have the minutes of Airlines Aviation Authority prepared immediately after each meeting. This was done by the Authority and John delivered them personally to the airline office in Orlando. They also contained a request that changes or corrections be made within two days, and the minutes were then approved prior to the next negotiation meeting. John was helpful in many other ways. He became a close friend of mine and together we made several trips gathering information about operating major airports, surveying possible contractors,and identifying concessionaireswith special emphasis on ride devices to serve movement within the international terminal.
Dick Haury and Gerald Hardage
The design of the new Orlando International Airport began with Justus Hellmuth preparing a series of concepts under the direction of John Wykoff. They presented these concepts to the Airline Technical and Property Committees over a period of several months, and got their concurrence by the spring of 1977 to proceed with the project by hiring a design consultant.
They advertised and received proposals from many national and international consultants with the result being the selection of Greiner Engineering of Tampa,which chose Vice President Dick Haury to head up the Greiner team’s A & E efforts. The team was contracted to provide all design, construction oversight and environmental services through the completion and initial operation of the new terminal complex. The team was composed of Greiner as lead, Switzer Associates of Orlando and Kemp, Bunch and Jackson of Jacksonville providing Architecture, and Bowyer-Singleton of Orlando providing Civil Engineering as sub-consultants to Greiner. The overall project manager was Dick Haury. Switzer was headed by Richard Zipperly after Dwane Stark suffered a heart attack at the beginning. KBJ was headed by Walter Taylor, and Bower–Singleton was headed by Jimmy Garrett.
GOAA also selected Gilbane Building Company to provide Construction Management and hired Gerald Hardage to serve as Program Manager as the project developed and construction began.
Design work began in a GOAA building on the west side of the airport next to the building occupied by Jestus Hellmuth and John Wykoff. Three problems immediately presented themselves. The first was that the proposed location of the terminal complex was in a flood zone and the cost of raising the complex would make the project no longer feasible. Greiner engineers solved this by proposing and gaining approval of a plan to divert storm drainage around the terminal area in a project which became known as the “ditch-dike” -- a ditch to carry the water and a dike to protect the terminal buildings and roadways from flooding. The water falling on the terminal complex would be stored in a basin south of the terminal and then be released for downstream flow as the crest of the flood-waters passed.
The second problem was that while the airlines had approved proceeding with the design, they did not agree with or approve either the size presented or the layout. The size concern was solved by a Greiner Team plan to build the complex in stages.The first stage would satisfy the airlines’ vision of the future with limited expansion and the subsequent stages would be able to satisfy GOAA’s vision of the future to provide for 24 million passengers a year in the north terminal area, and a future doubling with the development of an ultimate complex incorporating both north and south terminals. The layout problem was solved by incorporating a second “commercial” deplane drive -- a first in airport terminals and unique to Orlando International Airport.
The third problem involved the community north of the airport. They were opposed to proceeding with runways in their present north-south direction and suggested that they be rebuilt in a diagonal northeast–southwest direction. This would not only doom the airport expansion from a cost perspective but also call for a full environmental impact statement which would take a minimum of two years and a maximum of several more years. GOAA staff, management Board, and Greiner spent a lot of time and energy with the community leaders pointing out that the best way to solve their noise problems was to maximize takeoffs to the south, and soon after construction completion to begin the process of building a third runway east of the complex. This would allow nighttime landings to be shifted to the new runway away from the community.
Into about 20 percent of the project, the board realized the project was in schedule and cost trouble, so they hired Gerald Hardage as Project Coordinator to oversee the operation to answer directly to the Board. Dick Haury had been wearing two hats -- Acting Project Manager and head of the Greiner team –and this was an impossible situation to handle. Immediately, Gerald got the team together and clarified the lines of authority. It was a great team but it had been pulling in different directions. Almost immediately, things began turning around.
The biggest challenge of all came when the project scope changed. Now we went from four carriers to 24 carriers. The budget jumped by about 100-million dollars, but the opening date remained the same: 1981! The fast-track project went into free-fall. The team, though, rallied with redesign and more focus to complete the project in a more timely manner. One of the keys of the success was the business sense of the Board. Decisions had to be made daily, and the Board responded accordingly. It was a total team effort.
With these problems solved, Dick Haury and his team stayed focused every day only on the project, and they were able to guide its creation from the start in the summer of 1977 to the opening in the fall of 1981, a period of only a little more than four years. The project was opened on time and well within budget.
A very helpful factor was the friendship and respect developed between all of GOAA’s staff, the consultants, and the contractors. Under the leadership of Norman Glass, Gerald Hardage, an airline on- site representative, the legal staff’s Fred Ward, GOAA’s board member General Joe Potter, and the Greiner Team and Gilbane, issues were presented weekly at a Construction Committee meeting and decisions were speedily forthcoming. It was also very helpful to have access to the GOAA Chairmen of the Board beginning with Wally Sanderlin and later Sherman Dantzler also at a weekly meeting with a reduced project staff at the chairmen’s offices.
This attitude was best summed up by an action of Gerald Hardage when he developed with Richard Zipperly’s artistic help a pin for each of us that read “I’m the one who’ll help make ‘81’” and then added “and I did it.” After the construction was completed, Gerald Hardage joined Richard Zipperly to form ZHA, the firm which became the Authority’s general A&E contractor.
General Counsel for the New Authority
The new Authority took proposals from local law firms to represent the Authority. After a voting system that eliminated the firms receiving the least number of votes, Giles, Hedrick & Robinson was selected as the attorneys in 1975, with me serving as lead counsel. I was assisted by attorneys Susan Murphy, Fred Ward and Harlan Tuck. The representation of the airport was the most stressful part of my legal career. During the 1970’s. I was working at the office two or three nights a week, attorney for -- and on the Board -- of First Federal, President of the Orlando Chamber ofCommerce, President of Kiwanis, President of the Children’s Home Society, making trips to Washington as counsel for one of the groups seeking the franchise to operate Channel 9 television, active in the Presbyterian Church, teaching Sunday School, serving as an elder, serving on the Board of World Missions, traveling extensively, and becoming President of Giles, Hedrick & Robinson. I also served for several years as Chairman of the Selective Service Board (Draft Board), and this not only involved regular meetings and hearings, but court appearances also. I couldn’t have done all that plus serving as legal counsel to the Greater Orlando Airport Authority without having the support of two wonderful ladies: Betty Robinson, wife and mother, who put up with my frequent absences, and Charlotte Rhodes, my assistant. Fred Ward introduced me one time by saying that “Jim thinks he runs Giles, Hedrick & Robinson, but we all know Charlotte does.”
Airline Agreement
In the mid 1970’s, because of its extensive route system to Orlando and its designation as the “Official Airline of Disney World,” Eastern Airlines had 80 percent of the traffic but only 50 per cent of the space at the terminal building. An expansion of its facilities was obviously necessary. The Authority denied the expansion request until Eastern made a commitment to a new terminal facility for Orlando. Airport officials presented their concept for the facility to Eastern management in Miami and the senior Eastern management agreed that the plan would be financially feasible and should proceed.
Following Eastern’s commitment, our team negotiated agreements with the four airlines that then had operating authority to serve the airport -- Delta, Eastern, National and Southern. They were represented by: Delta, Gordon Webb; Eastern, Bob Walter;National, Chuck Seaman, and Southern, Dick Price. Our negotiations team was composed of W.M. Sanderlin, Chairman; John F. Meacham, Executive Director;James C. Robinson, Legal Counsel; J. Wesley Fly, Treasurer; Justus Hellmuth, Airport Planner;and John S. Wycokoff, Executive Director. Since the city had no funds to construct a new terminal, the agreement provided that the airlines would guarantee the payment of bonds issued to construct the facility so that the cost of construction could be accomplished without the use of local tax money. They also received the benefit of surpluses and agreed to make up any operating deficits. The agreement was for 30 years and became standard for airport and airline use.
It was not a perfect agreement. The airlines wanted a new terminal but they didn’t want to have to guarantee the millions of dollars in bonds. The final agreement was reached only after many drafts and months of strenuous negotiations. The Authority members argued over what they considered problems with the Airlines-Authority agreement. Norman Rossman, Lee Chira and others felt the agreement could be improved upon. However, the counsel for Smith-Barney, Morgan Murray, told the authority that changes to the agreement would be a time-consuming effort and it might or might not improve the agreement, but delay would derail construction and financing. The four airlines signed the Airport Lease and Use Agreement that was then approved by the Authority. Based on the provisions of the agreement, the authority was able to validate and issue bonds in the amount of $125,000,000 at a reasonable rate of interest, and this allowed construction to begin. One of the members of the staff who contributed a great deal to the Authority was Capt. Jack Gillooly. He was properties manager of the authority and later became Executive Director, replacing John Meacham. Lake Gillooly on the west side of the airport is named for him.