Suburban Airport - History

History

Suburban airport lies on ground once owned by the Snowden Family. The family manor "Birmingham" was built in 1690, and sat adjacent to the runway on what is now the Northbound lanes of the Baltimore–Washington Parkway. The Snowden family cemetery sits just to the east of the runway, within the traffic pattern. This historic location was the home of the first Iron production in Maryland, Patuxent Iron Works. Just to the west of the airport is a later Snowden family manor, Montpelier.

Suburban Airport opened in March 1960 as a family run airport and fixed base operation. The first aircraft flown into the field was an Erco Ercoupe By 1963 the operations building and maintenace hangar were complete and there were 33 aircraft based on the field.

The airport hosts meetings of the Experimental Aircraft Association and aviation oriented youth education programs such as Young Eagles flights.

The airport has been a Piper Aircraft dealer.

In 2001 Suburban Airport was closed for operations by the September 11 attacks. Aircraft had limited access to leave, then eventually arrivals and departures were granted under the flight rules of the Washington Air Defense Identification Zone.

Suburban airport is currently owned by W18 LLC, an entity co-located with Bay Area Land Development and Polm Housing. The airport property is in a region affected by Base Realignment and Closure and gambling legislation at the nearby Laurel Park Racecourse. In 2004 Polm attempted to increase the zoning of the airport property from 21 allowable housing units to 641 units for a Workforce housing development called Riverwood. Polm publicly announced plans prior to the hearing to expand Suburban airport to support 300 aircraft, 100 hangars, helicopter charters, and operate a flight school if the increased zoning failed. 250 people attented the zoning hearing where the Riverwood zoning attempt did not pass. The same hearing passed zoning changes for the Polm development Fieldstone on the same road. In 2009 Polm offered to build a 715 seat privately run school if Riverwood zoning is approved.

In 2010 The Maryland Aviation Administration changed the criteria for minimum approach angles and marked the airport with new displaced thresholds. The thresholds shortened 1/3 of the runway for landing operations both ways on the 2,300-foot runway. Organizations that provided aircraft for Young Eagles flights have needed to relocate because the available runway was reduced beyond safe operating limits of their aircraft.

By late 2012, the airport owner had yet to expand hangars and operations as announced in 2004, efforts to bring gambling to nearby Laurel Park had failed, BRAC-related inflow ceased in 2011, declining home prices and interest rates from the recession greatly reduced the need for workforce housing developments, and the county's school and water demands were beyond capacity from overdevelopment. Suburban Airport's owner submitted plans to build the for-profit Monarch Global Village Academy Public Contract School for troubled children, managed by The Children's Guild, temporarily on the airport property in exchange for approval to build the Riverwood housing development. Anne Arundel County required the school to offset the impact of the proposed Riverwood development and overcrowding from other recently approved developments. The county announced that it would seek school construction sites elsewhere by December 2012.