Central Illinois Regional Airport (CIRA) with Executive Director Carl Olson
On episode #37 of Building BN, Patrick Hoban speaks with Central Illinois Regional Airport Executive Director, Carl Olson. Olson, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, came to Central Illinois in 2005, becoming the Executive Director of the Bloomington-Normal Airport Authority. Olson studied Airport and Business Management at the University of North Dakota, working at an airport in upstate New York prior to relocating to Bloomington-Normal.
The Central Illinois Regional Airport (CIRA), operated by the Bloomington-Normal Airport Authority, is — from their website — home to “four major airlines serving nine destinations, with connections worldwide. The airport has a total annual output of more than $165 million dollars, which translates to more than 1,300 jobs, upward mobility and improved quality of life for people who call the Central Illinois region home.”
The airport dates back to the 1920s, initially serving as a private airfield. In 1934, as a direct result of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal program to fund recovery efforts during the depression era, CIRA became a dedicated airfield. CIRA currently offers services for commercial flights, private aircraft, and cargo flight operations — including FedEx air cargo, which began operating at CIRA in 2015. The CIRA website explains, “FedEx flight operations at CIRA means expanded FedEx capacity and service in our region, more jobs in Central Illinois, and more dollars injected into our community — a win-win-win scenario!” The FedEx hub, which is the single largest employer at CIRA, includes trucking, retail, and air services. Explains Olson, the operations at CIRA are FedEx’s “only regional sorting and distribution facility in Illinois, outside of Chicago O'Hare,” and service the entirety of Central Illinois.
Explains Olson, “With [American and Delta Airlines’] vast global and domestic network, you can get virtually anywhere in the world, right from Bloomington-Normal ... So Beijing, São Paulo, and all the other business capitals are all one-stop from Bloomington.” The airport also offers two low-fare, leisure carriers — Frontier and Allegiant — which offer point-to-point service to several getaway locations in Florida and Colorado. Olson says, “You can literally leave CIRA in the morning and be on the beach in Tampa by noon. You're looking at a two-hour [direct] flight. A quick trip to the beach and you've got your toes in the sand by lunchtime.”
In terms of the property, the airport has plenty of available land, ready to be developed. Potential use includes professional, commercial, or retail areas, high traffic density areas, manufacturing, or industrial. “So there's a lot of opportunities there for development [at CIRA], whether it's commercial, professional retail or whether it's industrial manufacturing,” says Olson.
For more information about the Central Illinois Regional Airport, call 309-663-7383 or use the contact form on their website. To listen to this episode in its entirety, which includes Olson’s thoughts on what makes Bloomington-Normal such a great place to call home, click here.
