Texas Considers Old Airport For New Airport Site

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Okay, see if you can follow this one: In 1999, Robert Mueller Municipal Airport in Austin, Texas, was closed down, theoretically in favor of using all that airport space for development. But oddly enough, it turns out the airport provided space for lots of pilots and their airplanes, who now had no place to go. The state legislature subsequently decreed that central Texas had to find a spot for a new general aviation airport … but expressly excluded Mueller as a possible site. State representative Ron Wilson, of Houston, has never accepted that logic, and in the current session he has introduced a bill that would allow Robert Mueller to be the new airport. Alas, similar bills of his have failed in the past, but in politics, one never knows. On Tuesday, AOPA announced its support of the bill. Wilson told The Dallas Morning News this week that the city was shortsighted and irresponsible when it shut down Mueller, and the closure has blighted a low-income area. “You’ve got this cancer in the middle of East Austin,” he said, “that was sold to them as this revitalization project. If I can convert it back into an airport, it could employ a lot of people in that neighborhood and would make their quality of life much better.” Dawnna Dukes, state rep from Austin, told the Morning News: “Once [Wilson] has an idea — it doesn’t matter how many years — he won’t forget it. I just wish he’d forget Robert Mueller airport.”

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