Aviation View | Volume 2, Issue 2

76 AVIATION VIEW VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2 for the Airport. An onsite flight school works with several charter schools, so a lot of students are actually getting their pilot’s license at 16 years old, before they’re even eligible to get a driver’s license. MFR has been instrumental with assisting in developing that program but now they are looking to expand it. Brienza shares, “Our vision for the six-acre development site I spoke of is to bring in a multitude of higher education facilities as well as corporations to start a Regional Aviation Center of Excellence at the airport.” It will be a brick and mortar building for classrooms with a hangar on either side – one to store aircraft for a flight school and the other for an Aviation Maintenance Professional (A & P) program. They plan to offer a variety of programs there, including everything flight training, aviation engineering, aviation management, as well as training for air ambulance emergency responders, fire fighting emergency responders, aerial emergency responders. Everyone will be have their own construction company doing the build for a Home2Suites by Hilton with at least 118 rooms.” The goal is for that to attract other commercial development and spur tourism. The hotel will be sitting on a 5.5 acre piece of land, but only needs about 2.5 acres. The Airport team is now in the process of finding a consultant that will put together a restaurant feasibility study to see what restaurants would be successful in that area, possibly a gas station. “We’re in that stage now to determine the appropriate businesses for that site – to make it a little community,” Brienza says. “The one really good thing about our airport, in my eyes, is that we’re so remote from other airports that we are the only entry point to the Rogue Valley region. So if you want to go to Crater Lake National Park, the scenic caves, some of the 126 vineyards in our county, we are the access point to all those activities.” Promoting aviation as a career is a key priority D A I RPORT