WSTB

Oy!

F&M, your Asheville example is a good one. Asheville would not be the city it is today without the airport! I have no doubt that the Cecil family was instrumental in making that happen. In the last “non-covid” year Biltmore had 1.7 million visitors. I repeat, 1.7 million people! Stop and think how much money all those visitors brought into Asheville. I know many were from areas within driving distance, but many came via the airport. In 2019, the last non-covid year Asheville airport had 1.6 million passengers and I’m certain a large portion of that traffic was Biltmore visit related. PTI had 1.1 million in 2019. Once again, I repeat, 1.6 million passengers to Asheville vs 1.1 million to PTI! I have friends who live in lower Manhattan and since there is a direct flight to Asheville from EWR (and now LGA), they flew in one weekend to see the estate. Walker, per your suggestion, I’m so pissed and I’m going to write a letter to the mayor sometime in the next week or so and include my example of why the name is so important and also why we should immediately start discussions with Jet Blue. The combination of the wonderful Apple news (for RTP and the state) and my simultaneous feeling that Winston Salem was once again a loser has made me crazy because I hate to lose! I’m anxiously waiting for the upcoming announcement F&M mentioned hoping it will make me feel better. I feel like the next impending shoe to drop is going to be UNC School of the Arts, but I’ll put that in the proper thread.

Not to veer off topic, but what is your concern with UNCSA? I’d assume that with them being part of the UNC school system, the chances of them relocating are next to nil. I’ve seen that concern mentioned here before, and I would think it would require an Act of God to facilitate a UNC school relocation.

yadkin - I apologize if I plagiarized an earlier post of yours. I don’t recall the post, but it’s certainly possible that I read it and it made a strong impression. I drive past the GSO exit on 40 every day, and it is such a short trip to Winston. Today, I made note of the sign that projects travel time to Highway 52 from Greensboro, not far past the airport (right by the Farmer's Market). 13 minutes. 13 minutes from Greensboro to the 52 interchange in downtown Winston.

WSBornNBred, sorry I’m a little late getting back to the forum tonight. I put my comment in the UNCSA category to keep this thread on topic.

UNCSA was one of Charlotte's early attempts to take from Winston-Salem. Hugh McColl wanted to create a UNCSA Visual Arts School on North Tryon. He opened his wallet and Winston-Salem, still upset over Wachovia, pressured the school to say no. I think a downtown visual arts school is a good idea for Winston-Salem and would like to see UNCSA consider the Forsyth County Hall of Justice as a location for a visual arts school in downtown Winston-Salem. That would make a residential conversion of 8 West Third even more attractive.

I'm also in need of good news and a 15-16 storey mixed-use proposal in downtown would do it. It seems as if everything we are talking about was first posted here a few years ago and the only recent news is restaurants. At the same time, we are watching Winston-Salem's peers add something to their skylines, even in cities you wouldn't think would add anything to their skylines. And Winston-Salem hasn't even seen a proposal for anything like that in over a decade. It wouldn't surprise me if we had to wait well into next year before hearing anything. I do believe this is exactly what we all need to lift us up and it should have a big impact on downtown, too. Maybe it will lead to other developers proposing more vertical projects? We really haven't seen anything like this since 21 years ago. It almost feels as if the old Winston-Salem is back! The Winston-Salem that proposed and attempted big things.

Back to the airport, it's possible we could bring the Yadkin Valley Wine Region on-board to help with bringing-back passenger service. I would even be open to renaming it Winston-Salem / Yadkin Valley Airport, to connect to the wine region and tourism. In exchange for that renaming, I would want funding from neighboring counties and offer them a seat on an airport board. The name would still show as Winston-Salem on the departure board, but the name on the building would say Yadkin Valley Airport and could take a Yadkin Valley theme for artwork and architecture.

Getting your city's name out there is important and one of the things Greensboro did well was to take advantage of an opportunity to brand nearly everything here as Greensboro, from the CSA to the airport. High Point had to trademark Home Furnishings Capitol to prevent Greensboro from taking it. It would benefit Winston-Salem to get its name out there. Like I said, the Triad can merge the numbers of both airports in marketing materials. It may result in more flights to the area and maybe higher passenger totals that all three Triad cities can use to attract jobs / investment?

Raleigh needed one of today's big tech names to compete and the Apple announcement gave them that victory. Right now, Atlanta is establishing itself, very quickly, as the center of tech in the southeast. A title I would've thought Raleigh would have, if you asked me a decade ago. Cranes are coming down at a Google Skyscraper and a massive Microsoft campus was recently announced here in Atlanta. Atlanta is trying to run-away with tech. Since Apple's CEO has a Raleigh-Durham connection (didn't he go to college in the area or something like that?) and their COO is from Raleigh, it made Apple an easier win (not easy, but easier) that can prevent Raleigh from falling too far behind. I was talking with someone last year about "IT" cities (as in trendy places to be cities) and we both could see the number of "IT" cities consolidating further and Raleigh-Durham possibly becoming the main metro and economic driver in North Carolina in the future. Even edging-out Charlotte. I can also see Raleigh-Durham having a bigger impact on red/blue elections, as being the city that could push North Carolina over to the blue side.

I believe you may be thinking of Apple COO Jeff Williams, who is a Raleigh native and went to State and Duke. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, did get his MBA from Duke--he was at IBM at the time, presumably in RTP--but is an Alabama native and an Auburn grad, all of which would probably give him more of an Atlanta lean if anything.

I think Georgia may be paying a slight penalty for its tumultuous state politics at the moment, much as we did in the wake of the bathroom bill--something we're still paying for in some ways. That dumb bathroom bill and the nixing of film incentives here were both huge boons for Georgia and, to a lesser extent, South Carolina. But there are those in the legislature who see a benefit to minimizing the role of tech and film production in NC as the proliferation of those industries change the composition of the population here and threaten the GOP hold on the legislature.

I really wish the city would aggressively go after companies in the EVTOL market for Smith Reynolds. This is from Fortune Business Insights “The global market for eVTOL aircraft is estimated to be USD 8.5 billion in 2021 and is projected to reach USD 30.8 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 15.3% during the forecast period” This would be ideal for the airport because you don’t need enormous amounts of land and the huge infrastructure of a major airport to handle traditional fixed wing aircraft. If we could attract a company involved in this segment, we would be getting in early for a market where development and sales are going to grow at a mind-boggling rate over the next few decades. Another study by Morgan Stanley is telling investors that “eVTOL aircraft could ultimately represent a $9 trillion global market, but that it will likely take decades for the urban air mobility (UAM) sector to achieve its full potential (i.e. by 2050).” So now is the time to get into this area of the aviation sector. https://assets.verticalmag.com/wp-conte ... 6_0000.pdf

What do you think about Airline buses at Smith Reynolds Airport?



https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/04/11/ ... and-planes

Instead of taking a flight to neighboring cities (short-haul flight), you take a bus. A bus like this, from Smith Reynolds Airport, to Raleigh's and Charlotte's airports would be nice. A lot of parking at the airport and the airlines would finally have service to Winston-Salem (INT).

This is a great concept and I would use it! In the not too distant future, the busses could be easily replaced with electric VTOL's. This would also allow the small regional airports which are quickly losing most or all air service to function as a transportation hub again and help the smaller communities. You also no longer need many hundreds of acres and a runway that's at least 6500 feet long to land a fully loaded regional jet.

I reckon this is better than naught, but still hoping for some meaningful transportation development at INT and elsewhere in W-S.

This is a good and short video from CNBC released on Monday about the EVTOL business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z5llj9RUVc

Aviation International News has set up a website especially for new air mobility aircraft and systems development. If you're interested, the website is: https://futureflight.aero/

Nice article about the new program at Smith Reynolds: "Want to work in the unmanned aircraft industry? Head to Winston-Salem's Smith Reynolds Airport" - https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/i ... ogram.html