An illustration of a small plane flying away from an airport.

Illustration by Tabitha Walters

Since city council decided not to expand the primary runway at the Ann Arbor Municipal Airport last December, some are asking questions about the future of the property. One of the country’s oldest airports—it had its first flight in 1928—it’s often used for flight training. Proponents of the expansion argued that extending the runway would make the airport safer. But the airport is located in Pittsfield Township, and residents there argued that it would exacerbate noise and pollution. 

These township neighbors—and city residents beneath the flight path—would like to see the airport closed. With Ann Arbor landlocked and facing self-declared housing and climate crises, “This is a piece of land that could be prime for housing or energy production,” says Ward 3 councilmember Travis Radina, a council liaison to the Airport Advisory Committee. “So [repurposing is] always just something that’s in the back of policymakers’ minds as we look forward.” 

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But the city can’t simply shut down the airport. Because it has a Federal Aviation Administration control tower, both the FAA and the Michigan Department of Transportation have the right to take it over if the city opts out. That would be “a worst-case scenario,” Radina says. Since the vote, he says, there has been interest among council members in establishing a regional task force to discuss the airport’s future. At this stage, he says, “it’s premature to set expectations about what it could be.” 

 “I’d certainly be open to the regional conversation about what we should be doing from the airport’s perspective,” says Pittsfield Township trustee Dave Brabec. Given the regional need for more housing, “I think that we’d be remiss as elected officials to not at least explore those types of conversations.” 

After decades of tension over the runway expansion, Brabec believes the priority going forward should be to enter into conversations with stakeholders to understand what the best use is for the airport, the land it’s built on, and the community.  He says that Pittsfield leaders now have “a good working relationship” with city council. “And I’m going to be really intentional about continuing to curate a good relationship,” he says, as discussions about the airport’s future move forward.

This article has been edited since it was published in the May 2025 Ann Arbor Observer. The ward Travis Radina represents has corrected, and the description of the airport’s use for flight training has been revised.