BY JOYCE BLAY
Staff Writer
Lakewood Airport Director Bert Albert discusses the future of the 60-year-old airport on Cedar Bridge Avenue. The airport terminal is pictured at left. For 60 years, the Lakewood Airport has been the little engine of business that could.
Opened in 1945 on Cedar Bridge Avenue by William C. Applegate, the 239-acre airport was located on the outskirts of town amid chicken farms.
Today, at 192 acres, it is the center of the state’s second largest industrial park. Members of the authority overseeing the airport aspire to the same success, according to Lakewood Airport Authority Chair-man Richard Orne.
PHOTOS BY MIGUEL JUAREZ staff “The image we’re looking to present would be consistent with the rest of the industrial park,” Orne said. “We want the airport itself to become a destination either by road or by air (for those who want) to have dinner at a restaurant on airport grounds or people who want to attend a BlueClaws (baseball) game.”
The airport has attracted the attention of residents as well as day-trippers throughout more than a half-century of operation. Some have played a significant role in its development. Former Lakewood Mayor Jerome Greenberg recalled the airport’s opening as a step toward bringing much-needed services to area residents.
“In those days, you didn’t have what you have now,” Greenberg said. “It was all open space and doctors started flying airplanes [to reach patients]. That’s what started it up almost 60 years ago. All you had were egg farms and there was plenty of room. It was not near town. It was like going from here to Forked River. The guy had the land and I guess he thought he would put up an airport.”
Applegate paid $3,000 for the land he purchased from the township to build the airport. The parcel was part of 838 acres the township had purchased from the Lakewood Hotel and Land Association in 1940.
Another former mayor, John Franklin, who is now the director of Lakewood’s Public Works Department, recalled that the Applegates owned a dry cleaning business on Second Street in town. However, he said they were also a family of pilots.
Despite his family background, Applegate sold the airport in 1946 to Lakewood Air Service for $1 and an unspecified mortgage amount he owed the township, according to historical information provided by airport director Bert Albert. Applegate owned the airport for less than three months before deciding to sell it.
Lakewood Air Service was featured with other township businesses that paid for the promotion in the 1947 movie “My Home Town,” produced by Park Motion Picture Productions. The movie is available at the Lakewood branch of the Ocean County Library. Airport scenes include a group shot of the men and women employed by the company, an immaculately clean machine shop, and workers helping passengers to disembark planes.
Ten years after acquiring the airport, Lakewood Air Service sold the property in 1956 to Salvatore and Marie Coniglio for $1 and the outstanding balance of the mortgage amount owed to the township. Six years later, in 1962, Coniglio sold the airport for the same terms to Airport Industries, which merged with Leisure Technologies in 1978.
Robert Schmertz, the head of Leisure Technologies, was the developer of Lake-wood’s Leisure Village, the oldest adult community in the state.
The new company subdivided the airport property and sold 150 acres to Old Bricksburg Airport Corp. for $300,000.
When township officials decided to consider buying the airport, a group of investors that included Lawrence Bathgate II, Philip Solondz, Daniel Solondz and Richard Sambol offered to sell Lakewood a land parcel which expanded the subdivided portion owned by Bricksburg Airport Corp. to a total of 192 acres.
A committee was formed by the township to examine whether to purchase the airport. Based on the group’s recommendation, the Township Committee voted to authorize the purchase. Both land transfers were registered with the Ocean County clerk’s office in February 1996. The township paid $5.3 million for the parcel owned by Old Bricksburg Airport and $3.6 million for the parcel owned by MacTavish Partnership, the name the investors called their company.
Ninety percent of the $8.9 million purchase price was paid with grants from the Federal Aviation Authority, another 5 percent came from the New Jersey Depart-ment of Transportation and the remaining 5 percent was paid by MacTavish Partnership.
Bathgate said he and his partners also paid for 10 years of property taxes on the airport at the current rate, as well as a contribution toward improvements on the airport’s runway for a total of more than $1 million.
The airport authority was formed in February 2003 and its first executive director was appointed in September of that year.
Bathgate said he and his partners wanted Lakewood to have the airport at no cost to taxpayers. He said that he felt the continued operation of the airport would be ensured in the hands of the township and that the industrial park would benefit as a result.
Although he was not a pilot, Bathgate said he had fond memories of the airport while growing up. In 1953, Bathgate said, he found temporary work with a circus that had come to town and opened on airport grounds.
“I helped set up tents as a 13- or 14-year-old kid,” Bathgate recalled. The airport “had a gravel runway that ran east-west, parallel to Cedar Bridge Road.”
As an adult, Bathgate and his partners helped shape the present size of the airport.
“My roots go way back in the area,” said Bathgate, who owns a law office in the industrial park. “I’ve had a law office in that town for 40 years. I was a deputy township attorney in 1966. I wanted to do the right thing for the town and that meant keeping the airport running.”
That is also the intention of the Lakewood Airport Authority.
“When [the town] took over the airport (in 1996), there were 25 planes here,” Albert said. “Ted Pichel (of Aviation Charters), the fixed base operator, cleaned up this terminal building and created a demand for pilots to use the airport.”
Lakewood Airport is designated a B-1 airport, Orne said. Planes are permitted to land there according to approach speed and wingtip-to-wingtip width of each craft. Although few jets meet the airport’s landing specifications, Orne said business executives and other travelers arrive at the airport by helicopter as well as plane.
A new runway has also helped attract business. A 3,400-foot-long by 60-foot-wide runway was paid for through grant funding and in part by Bathgate and his partners. It has a new taxiway, new turn-offs and a state-of-the-art lighting package that can be activated from the air. Additional grant funding will pay for navigational aids to assist pilots who are landing at the airport.
Albert said 75 planes are now based out of Lakewood Airport, a three-fold increase in less than a decade of township ownership of the property. In addition, Albert said the airport authority would seek to commercially develop about 64 acres along Airport Road, which borders the airport. Plans are also on the drawing board for a new two-story terminal building that would have a fast food restaurant on the first floor and a full-service, sit-down restaurant on the second floor. Meeting rooms and office space would also be on site.
Recently, the airport authority announced plans to solicit a buyer interested in having the airport named after that person or someone of their choice for a period of 20 years. The name would be placed on a sign to be constructed on Cedar Bridge Avenue, the current and new terminal building, and on any stationary or advertising material the airport publishes or distributes. The closing date for bids was July 31.
The airport is still soliciting interest by telecommunications companies seeking to build a cell tower as high as 150 feet tall on the far corner of the airport grounds on Airport Road.
While the airport authority hopes to garner needed revenue from both marketing plans, the bulk of the funding will come from government grants, said Albert. Projects that have the highest priority are the completion of an outside perimeter fence, repavement of the airport’s apron and installation of more tie-downs for prospective airplane tenants.
In two to three years, Albert said, construction will begin on 40 new T-hangars to be built on the airport’s south side. The two old hangars now in use on the airport’s north side will be taken down. Albert said the north side of the airport is primarily wetlands, making the south side more desirable for development.
Albert said a revised airport master plan was submitted to the FAA on July 29 and a land release will be submitted in October pending completion of an environmental assessment. He said a five-year redevelopment plan could begin upon approval by the FAA.
Earlier this year, Lakewood Deputy Mayor Meir Lichtenstein questioned whether the airport could achieve its goals. Lichtenstein is the Township Committee liaison to the Lakewood Industrial Corporation, which oversees the Urban Enterprise Zone in which the industrial park and the airport are located.
“I am questioning if the best use of the land the airport is on is as an airport,” he said in April. “The question is whether the airport would be this great draw for the industrial park. My concern is that the airport is quite a chunk of land and I want to make sure the township is making good use of it. If it’s not going to be a thriving airport, then that lends to a different type of decision.”
Lichtenstein said last week that he is not seeking to close the airport, but examining whether the township should sell a 16-acre strip of wetlands located on airport grounds to the airport authority.
Orne said a portion of the parcel is not wetlands and cuts across the airport’s runway. He said although the township has not interfered with the operation of the airport, the FAA instructed the airport authority to acquire the land due to its location.
Albert said the authority hired two appraisers to provide an estimate of the parcel’s value. The authority made an offer of $77,000 to the township based on an average of the two appraisals. However, the authority’s July 31 deadline for a reply came and went without one, said Albert.
Township Committeeman Raymond Coles, who owns a business in the industrial park, said the offer was not high enough.
“They’re saying our inaction is delaying their plans, but even if the property is wet, that doesn’t mean the township is going to sell it for less than 2.5 percent of its fair market value,” Coles said on Aug. 1.
He based his estimate of the parcel’s worth on recent auctions of township-owned land.
Coles said if the township were to sell the airport authority the land it wants, the value of the entire airport would increase. He said he was more inclined to provide the airport authority with easement rights to the parcel. Coles said the airport authority initially spurned the committee’s offer of easement rights and continued to demand ownership of the parcel.
Coles said he would rather see the parcel donated to the open space land trust than sold outright to the airport authority.
Meanwhile, on an overcast Sunday morning in late July, miles from the municipal building where the governing body has pondered the future of the airport, the facility begins another day of operation.
Partners Ryan Parente, 24, of Toms River, and Matt Applegate, 35, of Ocean Township, principals of Aerial Advertising, a banner towing service based out of Lakewood Airport, prepare for a busy day.
Unlike his namesake, Applegate said he did not have a pilot’s license. However, he said that pilots employed by Aerial Advertising would be expected to tow as many as 60 banners that morning to beaches as near as Point Pleasant or as far as the Hamptons on Long Island.
Lakewood Airport’s central location and proximity to tourist venues have made it a key component to his company’s success, said Applegate.
Parente indicated there was another reason that the airport had become home to his company.
“It’s a nice little airport,” Parente said. “Everybody knows each other. It’s a good place to share a cup of coffee and memories.”
Herman Hulse, of Brick, said he has been flying out of Lakewood Airport since 1948 and had known William Applegate for years. He said the airport’s founder studied for a pilot’s license upon completion of his military service and helped others earn one, too.
“After World War II, the G.I. Bill enabled veterans to get a private air or commercial pilot’s license,” Hulse said. “He opened a flight school at the airport.”
Flying lessons are still available at the airport.
Although airport amenities remain in demand, many structures where they are provided are in need of replacement, according to Hulse. At the top of his wish list is a new terminal. Hulse said a 12-by-12-foot wooden building served as the terminal before Schmertz replaced it with the current terminal building.
Once new, paint on the façade of the small terminal is now peeling and weatherworn. The airport’s apron behind the building is veined with patches of tar used to repair it many times over the years.
Standing at the back door of the terminal building, John Mutch, of Toms River, watched a hesitant sun drift in and out of ashen clouds overhead. He said he was hopeful of good weather so he and a friend could take off for a day of golf in Maine.
“I like the airport in Lakewood,” Mutch said. “It’s nicely located and it’s a place where people with the same interests can come together to share them.”