This Fourth of July weekend is expected to set travel records. But Charlotte Douglas is not the only airport in the region that many travelers will be passing through.
About half an hour northeast of Charlotte, Concord-Padgett Regional Airport is emerging as an alternative. The airport has more than doubled its monthly passenger totals over the last three years, according to data from the city of Concord. For more, I’m joined now by the Charlotte Ledger’s Tony Mecia for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: So does this mean that the days of Concord-Padgett being the scrappy runner-up to Charlotte Douglas are over?
Tony Mecia: Well, it's still pretty scrappy. It's still a lot smaller than Charlotte Douglas International Airport. We looked at the number of passengers and takeoffs and landings at the Concord airport. They've really grown. That's largely because you have a couple of airlines there that have been expanding, most recently Avelo Airlines, but also Allegiant Air. So it's becoming a little bit of an alternative for some passengers who maybe don't want to deal with some of the hassles of a larger airport, Charlotte Douglas, like parking, taking shuttles, and higher prices. Some of them say it's more convenient just to go into Concord and take low-cost carriers down to Florida or to other cities.
Terry: Charlotte Douglas is actually seeing lower passenger numbers this weekend, and before, over Memorial Day, compared to prior years. Is Concord one of the reasons for that?
Mecia: Well, Concord's still a lot smaller. Charlotte has about six times as many takeoffs and landings and about 100 times as many passengers. So it's still a little bit of a small blip. A lot of the decline at Charlotte Douglas has to do with maybe fewer flights by American as opposed to a mass exodus of people going to Concord.
Terry: Let’s go now to an update on a story we talked about last week at this time. A $1.5 billon project is being planned for the site in Rock Hill that at one point was intended to be the headquarters for the Panthers. What can you tell us about what’s going on there instead?
Mecia: Yeah, news came out this week that the Swiss company Octapharma is going to start a manufacturing facility. They make medicine — it’s a pharmaceutical company. The plan is to invest about $1.5 billion is the plan and create more than 1,200 jobs.
It's a well-known site where the Panthers initially were going to move a bunch of their operations, but it's being redeveloped. There's still some hoops to jump through as far as the incentives, but it's sort of being re-envisioned as a pharmaceutical-type campus. You have a few of those in the region, and it certainly looks like a big win for Rock Hill.
Terry: Finally, it’s been a little more than a week since legendary former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan died at the age of 100. I bet many people don’t realize they walk past a likeness of Greenspan every day at a major intersection in Charlotte. Where exactly?
Mecia: Yeah, you might not have noticed it, but there are four statues on the corner of Trade and Tryon Streets, each depicting various parts of Charlotte's identity. One of them is called “Commerce.” People might have noticed there's a guy panning for gold. Right beneath the pan, where he's panning for gold, empties into the head of a man who is supposed to be an international banker. The artist who sculpted that, Raymond Kaskey, said about 10 years ago that was intended to be a depiction of Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman who passed away last week. While Alan Greenspan is no longer with us, his likeness is sitting right there on a statue at Trade and Tryon Streets uptown.
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson & Associates and Central Piedmont Community College.
