DEVELOPMENT #3
AUGUST 26, 2026
Why Is SRQ Waiting for the FAA to Change Its Mind?
What Decades of Airport-Land Decisions Suggest About the Future of the New
College East Campus
More than two years have passed since the Federal Aviation Administration declined to approve the Sarasota Manatee Airport Authority's request to release approximately thirty-one acres of Sarasota Bradenton International Airport property for sale to New College of Florida.
The FAA issued its determination on April 10, 2024.
The Airport Authority appealed. During subsequent discussions, however, the Authority came to understand that the FAA was unlikely to reverse its determination. The Authority withdrew its request rather than continue the appeal to another written rejection. The proposed sale did not occur.
Since then, the political leadership of the federal government has changed.
New College President Richard Corcoran has publicly expressed confidence that this change creates another opportunity. At a December 2025 Board of Trustees meeting, he described the FAA concerns raised during the previous federal administration as “specious” and said New College and the Airport Authority were essentially undertaking a “round two.” (Bradenton Herald)
That possibility should not simply be dismissed. Federal executive-branch policies and practices have changed significantly since January 2025. The FAA can consider another proposal from the Airport Authority. A materially different proposal, supported by different facts, could receive a different response.
But possibility is not probability.
And possibility is a particularly dangerous foundation upon which to base a long-term campus master plan.
The time has come for New College, the Sarasota Manatee Airport Authority, and the State of Florida to confront a possibility that has received remarkably little attention:
The FAA may never approve the permanent transfer of this airport land to New College.
Prudent planning requires more than hoping that it will.
What the New College Master Plan Assumes
New College adopted its updated Campus Master Plan in December 2025.
The plan recognizes that the East Campus is leased from SRQ Airport and says the College should address its ownership arrangement over the long term. But the alternatives it identifies are acquisition or extension of the lease. It does not develop a meaningful alternative under which New College eventually relocates East Campus functions and returns the airport-owned property to SRQ. (New College of Florida)
That is a significant planning assumption.
I raised this issue during the New College master-planning process. I urged the College to consider a Plan B: What if New College never acquires the airport land?
That possibility was not incorporated into the adopted plan as a genuine long-term development alternative.
Meanwhile, New College continues investing in the East Campus. Its baseball facility, for example, extends from New College-owned property onto airport-owned land leased to the College. Construction has proceeded after considerable discussion involving the Airport Authority and FAA. (WUSF)
Each additional investment makes the assumption of permanent East Campus occupancy more deeply embedded in New College's future.
That makes the underlying assumption increasingly important to test.
Two Things Now Have to Happen
For New College to obtain permanent ownership of the East Campus airport property, at least two major uncertainties must resolve in its favor.
First, the FAA must reach a different conclusion from the one it reached in April 2024.
Second, the Airport Authority itself must continue to believe that selling the land is in SRQ's long-term interest.
Much of the public discussion has concentrated on the first question.
The second may eventually become just as important.
SRQ is beginning another Airport Master Plan update. In June 2026, the Airport Authority solicited professional planning services covering airport forecasting, terminal and roadway planning, land use, real estate, transportation, airspace and other long-term development requirements. (Govly)
The previous airport master-planning environment was fundamentally different. New College's leases extended to 2056, so planners understandably treated the leased property as unavailable during much of the normal planning horizon. The current Master Plan update provides an opportunity to ask a different question:
If the New College property eventually becomes available to SRQ, how could a rapidly growing commercial-service airport use approximately thirty-one acres of strategically located terminal-area airport property?
In my professional judgment as a former airport properties director, the answer is unlikely to be “nothing.”
SRQ's extraordinary growth has changed the airport's physical requirements. Terminal support, automobile parking, rental-car operations, airport hotels, roadway systems, ground-service facilities, aircraft support uses and other needs compete for finite airport property.
The precise uses should be determined by the professional master planners—not by me.
But I believe there is a substantial likelihood that the new Master Plan will identify present or future airport value in land that previous plans treated as unavailable because of the New College leases.
If that occurs, the controversy changes again.
The question would no longer be merely whether the FAA would permit SMAA to sell the property.
It would also be:
Why would SMAA want to sell property its own current Master Plan identifies as useful for the airport's future?
That could eventually make FAA approval almost beside the point.
The FAA Has Faced This Question Before
President Corcoran's expectation of a different result is understandable politically.
It is much harder to support historically.
The FAA did not invent the principle applied at SRQ in April 2024. The federal government has been protecting federally obligated airport property through presidential administrations of both parties for decades.
Several actual cases are instructive.
Oceanside Municipal Airport — California
Oceanside provides perhaps the clearest comparison.
Local officials wanted greater flexibility to use airport property for non-aeronautical development. The City had accepted federal assistance, including federal funding to acquire airport real estate.
FAA responded forcefully.
In 2007, FAA told the City that approximately twenty-two acres acquired with Airport Improvement Program funds had been acquired expressly for airport development and remained subject to continuing federal obligations. FAA also rejected the assumption that simply waiting for grant obligations to expire, declining additional grants, or repaying earlier grants would necessarily free the airport from its real-property obligations. (AOPA)
Then came an even closer parallel.
In 2008, the City faced a contractual demand to sell nearly fifteen acres of airport property back to a previous owner.
FAA refused to release the property.
Why?
Because the property was still needed for aeronautical purposes. (AOPA)
What happened afterward is instructive.
The land did not eventually become non-airport property because enough time passed or political circumstances changed. Oceanside changed direction. The airport subsequently entered a long-term development arrangement emphasizing aviation investment. (AOPA)
Nearly two decades later, the airport remains an airport. In 2026, the City was accepting new FAA grants for additional airport improvements. (Oceanside Legistar)
FAA's “no” became part of the planning reality.
Reid-Hillview Airport — California
Santa Clara County provides another revealing example.
The County sought release of airport property at Reid-Hillview for non-aviation commercial development.
On April 2, 2015, FAA declined to support the release. The federal government had participated in the acquisition of the property, and FAA was unwilling to release it under the circumstances presented. (Santa Clara County Files)
The County did not immediately accept that answer.
It continued developing arguments for release. In 2016 it again explained why it believed the parcel was unnecessary for aviation. Among other things, the County pointed to historical operations, the physical separation of the parcel and the airport's financial needs. (Santa Clara County Files)
The essential federal question nevertheless remained the same:
Was the airport property genuinely unnecessary for airport purposes?
Repetition of the request did not eliminate that requirement.
That lesson deserves attention in Sarasota.
A second proposal is not necessarily a stronger proposal simply because it is submitted to a different group of federal officials.
Queen City Municipal Airport — Pennsylvania
Queen City illustrates the durability of federal airport-property obligations over an even longer period.
The federal government transferred the former wartime airport to Allentown in 1948 with requirements governing its use for public airport purposes.
Over subsequent decades, some property was released. Other property was not.
A federal review of the airport's history documented FAA's continuing insistence that federally conveyed airport property and the revenues associated with it be administered for airport purposes. (DOT ROSA P)
The important lesson is not that federally obligated airport land can never be released. It can.
The lesson is that release is an affirmative federal decision requiring justification. It does not become inevitable merely because the sponsor prefers another use or because enough years have passed.
The Current FAA Still Applies the Same Basic Standard
Perhaps the strongest argument that the April 2024 SRQ determination was not merely a product of the previous presidential administration comes from the present FAA.
On February 20, 2026—more than a year after the change of administrations—the FAA issued a new Airport Compliance Manual, Order 5190.6C.
The new manual did not abandon the longstanding federal protection of airport property.
It reaffirmed it.
For federally conveyed property, FAA must determine that a proposed release will not prevent accomplishment of the public purposes for which the property was federally obligated and that the action protects or advances the interests of the United States in civil aviation. The FAA must also determine that a release will not significantly impair the airport's aeronautical purpose. (Federal Aviation Administration)
FAA's current land-release procedures continue to require the airport sponsor to explain the circumstances justifying a release, the proposed disposition, the property's value, the benefit to the airport from disposition versus retention, and the planning consequences reflected in the Airport Layout Plan. (Federal Aviation Administration)
And FAA's national land-use training emphasizes precisely the issue at the heart of the SRQ dispute: current and future aeronautical demand.
The FAA specifically teaches that property being held for a future airport purpose does not become surplus merely because it is temporarily being used for something else. (Federal Aviation Administration)
That principle has obvious relevance to property that has been occupied by New College for decades under a lease.
Occupancy is not ownership. And non-aeronautical occupancy does not establish that airport land has no future airport purpose.
That distinction is also central to the completed book. New College occupies the property, but SMAA owns it and remains responsible for the federal obligations attached to it.
Time Is Not Working in New College's Favor
There is a tendency to think that continued delay somehow improves New College's prospects.
I believe the opposite is more likely.
Every month that passes without FAA approval is another month in which New College could be evaluating alternative locations for facilities that it expects to use for generations.
Every year that New College invests more heavily in East Campus increases the eventual difficulty of changing course.
And every year of continued SRQ growth strengthens the reason for airport planners to reconsider the value of strategically located airport-owned property.
The Airport Authority's own current position makes the importance of the Master Plan unmistakable. After I proposed a negotiated resolution earlier this year, SMAA advised me that it intended to proceed with its Master Plan update and, after completion, determine what actions were in the airport's best interest.
That is exactly what an airport authority should do.
But New College should understand the implications.
It is effectively waiting for two uncertain future determinations:
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a new Airport Master Plan that would need to support the conclusion that SRQ can permanently surrender this strategically located property; and
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a new FAA decision reversing or materially departing from the result reached in April 2024.
Either could fail.
And if the new Airport Master Plan instead identifies the New College leasehold as valuable for future airport development, SMAA itself may conclude that the property should eventually be recovered when the leases permit rather than sold—even if federal officials were willing to entertain a sale.
That is why continued reliance on eventual ownership is becoming increasingly difficult to justify as prudent long-term planning.
Hope Is Not a Good Master Plan
A future SMAA proposal may differ materially from the 2024 proposal. FAA officials may evaluate the facts differently. The Airport Authority's Master Plan might conclude that SRQ will never need some or all of the property. The FAA could then approve a release.
No one can responsibly say that outcome is impossible.
But responsible public planning is not about identifying one favorable possibility and treating it as the future.
It is about preparing for reasonably foreseeable alternatives.
The historical record examined here does not support confidence that FAA will simply reverse its position because the administration changed.
The evidence points in the other direction.
FAA has protected airport property through Republican and Democratic administrations. It has rejected land dispositions at other airports when the property retained aviation value. It has required sponsors to justify releases rather than presume them. And the FAA's 2026 compliance manual, issued by the current administration, continues the fundamental principles upon which the SRQ determination rested.
That is the reality New College's long-term planning should confront.
There Is Now a Plan B
Fortunately, accepting that reality does not require abandoning New College's expansion.
Circumstances have changed dramatically since the original land-sale proposal.
The State of Florida has approved the transfer of the former University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus to New College. That creates an opportunity that did not previously exist.
The completed book proposes using that opportunity to resolve the land impasse rather than perpetuate it.
My proposed resolution, A Path to Resolving the SRQ–New College Land Impasse, starts from a different assumption:
Instead of trying indefinitely to convert airport land into permanent college property, SMAA and New College could negotiate a transition that gives New College sufficient time to relocate appropriate East Campus functions while allowing the airport eventually to recover strategically located airport property earlier than the existing 2056 lease expiration.
The proposal would require negotiation. It would require compromise. Details would require FAA review. Neither institution would obtain everything it might prefer.
But unlike waiting indefinitely for the federal government to reverse itself, it addresses the legitimate long-term interests of both institutions.
New College would gain greater certainty about where its future campus development will occur.
SMAA would gain greater certainty about when airport property could return to airport control.
The State could direct future capital investment toward property New College actually owns or controls for the long term.
And FAA would be presented with a proposal that reduces rather than perpetuates the long-term non-aeronautical encumbrance of federally obligated airport property.
It Is Time to Plan for Both Outcomes
New College and the State of Florida are free to continue pursuing FAA approval of another land transaction.
But they should no longer make that effort their only long-term plan.
The April 10, 2024 determination is more than two years old. The appeal did not succeed. Subsequent FAA actions have increased rather than eliminated federal oversight of significant changes involving the leasehold. And the current FAA has now issued a new national compliance manual preserving the longstanding principles protecting federally obligated airport property. (Federal Aviation Administration)
Meanwhile, SRQ is beginning the very planning process that may determine that this land has greater future airport value than previously recognized.
The prudent course is therefore straightforward.
Continue Plan A if state officials believe it remains worth pursuing.
But begin Plan B now.
New College should determine where its East Campus functions would ultimately go if it never acquired the airport property. The Airport Authority should require its master planners to evaluate the New College leasehold as potentially recoverable airport property rather than assuming perpetual college occupancy. And the State should compare the cost and opportunity of continued investment in leased airport land with development of property that New College can control permanently.
There is no need to wait for another rejection before beginning that work.
The historical record gives fair warning.
For decades, when FAA has concluded that federally obligated airport property remains important to aviation, changing local priorities, repeated requests and the passage of time have not reliably caused the agency to surrender the federal interest.