Aviation Business Journal | Buyers’ Guide Issue 2022 21 converted and brought up to modern standards, and recently we added several new hangars. We also have some non-aviation development here in our business park with Hillwood, a Ross Perot company out of Texas. And we own a golf course, which we lease to the town of Smyrna. A little bit of everything is really our intent because aviation – like everything else – goes in cycles. The diversification helps to flatten out the curves.” In light of the nod from NATA for the Executive Partnership Award, Black says partnership is the name of the game. “We actually have 53 different leases here in our lease file,” Black says, “but I don’t like the words landlord and tenant, because really we’re all business partners. That’s how I see all the businesses here: when they’re success- ful, the airport is successful. So, we take a business- minded, rather than bureaucratic, approach and we walk hand-in-hand with people as they go through a develop- ment process.” Black credits his team for the many successes. “There is never just one person that earns an award like this: there’s always a team behind it, and we have a great team here. A long list of people over those 31 years helped make this airport what it is, from our first chair- man, Jack Weatherford, to our current chairman, Mike Woods. The fact that we’ve only had two chairmen in 31 years says a lot about our consistency, and everyone on our staff holds themselves to a very high level of cus- tomer service at this airport. I think that’s super impor- tant to the people that come in and out of here: when you set the bar high for yourself, they notice. I don’t want to leave out the Chamber of Commerce, the state economic development arm: we work so closely with them to bring business not only to the airport, but also to the local community because we’re part of that community.” Black says he’s just getting started. “We just finished three major projects extending more roads and utilities into another section of the airport business park and laying the groundwork for the next development area,” he says. “At the same time, in 2023 we’re kicking off a big project to completely rehabilitate one of our runways, and we’re taking delivery of a new aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle. Next June, we have the Great Tennessee Air Show, featuring the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. After that, we’ll probably do a realign- ment of a few of our taxiways to increase efficiency, and we have several parties interested in building new corpo- rate hangars. So, it’s all still very exciting.” Black says he’s proudest of hosting community events, like the Smyrna Rotary Wings of Freedom fish fry, which raised $200,000 last year for veterans groups. Other recent community projects include an all-inclusive aviation-themed playground for kids in the park on the airport property. Black says he hopes the playground inspires future careers in aviation, just as his 3rd grade experiences inspired his. “You never know! I say the same thing every time we host the air show,” he says. “When we’re all neck deep in the details, I tell our team, ‘Just take some time this weekend to stop and look at the faces of the kids, because that’s the payoff for all this hard work that you’ve done over the past year: kids looking to the sky and dreaming.” Continued on page 23
