New runways 'major opportunity' for Slemon Park says corporation chair

As the aerospace sector marks its 25th year on Prince Edward Island, there are some lofty predictions being made for the next quarter century.

Just ask Wayne Carew, chairman of the Slemon Park Corporation.

"We have 1400 acres of developable space," said Carew. "The sky's the limit."

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One of the first projects on the agenda will likely be what Carew describes as "the rehabilitation of the runways, back to the way we inherited them."

"It would give us a major opportunity to go after high-end pilot defence training opportunities," Carew explained.

"Many countries now are not doing their own defence pilot training, particularly NATO countries. If we could work with a partnership to do something like that, it would be phenomenal. Because you would need residences, rehabilitation of the runway."

Fly in, fly out

Eric Richard, president of the Aerospace and Defence Association of Prince Edward Island, likes the idea of a new vision of Slemon Park.

"It is like the Field of Dreams. You have to build it so they will come. We can't have less than adequate runways and hope somebody's okay on flying in on that. It has to be up to snuff," he said.

"The initial thought behind Slemon Park back in the 90s was for it to be a major repair and overhaul centre ... You could fly in your aircraft, get your work done and fly your aircraft out."

Slemon Park's biggest tenant Vector Aerospace also likes the idea of improving the runways.

"To allow us to look at opportunities to grow us into maybe a fixed-base operating condition where aircraft could fly in and we could do engine removals and installations which we can do in South Africa or our Brisbane facility, so it would be nice to see the same in Summerside," explained Vector Atlantic president Jeff Poirier.

Cost concerns

But the idea of developing the runway has its detractors.

"Given the cost of ...paving that runway, if there's a positive plan in place as to what's going to happen after that's paved, that's one thing but it's going to be a significant amount of cash outlay," said Mark Coffin, CEO ofTronos.

"You still don't have fire cover currently at the airport and you also need to improve the instrumentapproaches and all of that continues to add money."

Coffin thinks the focus for Slemon Park should be elsewhere.

"I think it's very important to focus on smaller companies and the reason for that is it's very rare that you will have someone like a Vector or even a Honeywell," saidCoffin.

"You need to have holistic growth within companies. So you have to target the companies with 8 to 10 people and have them grow."

SlemonPark now in government hands

In April, the P.E.I. government announced it was buying out the minority shareholders in theSlemonPark Corporation and creating a new Crown corporation to run the property.

We're open for business for any type of aerospace company as long as it fits the bill and it's going to benefit Prince Edward Island.- Economic Development minister HeathMacDonald

"Twenty-five years ago it was a great idea. DonMcDougall'svision forSlemonPark was an owner-occupied aerospace park. And that half got completed and it became stalled," explainedCarew.

"It became evident to our board that we were the expression is neither fish nor fowl. Sometimes we were acting like a private sector corporation, sometimes we were still, our major owner, was the public sector. So we needed to clarify that."

'Key to our success'

Economic Development minister HeathMacDonaldsaid makingSlemonPark a Crown corporation will allow his government to make better decisions and deals.

"That's key to our success as an economy is to allow us to make decisions quickly, maybe even more so than our competitors because worldwide it is a very competitive stage that we're dealing with inaerospace,"explainedMacDonald.

"We're open for business for any type of aerospace company as long as it fits the bill and it's going to benefit Prince Edward Island."