Cornelia Fort Airpark
| Cornelia Fort Airpark | |||||||||||
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| IATA: none – ICAO: none – FAA LID: M88 | |||||||||||
| Summary | |||||||||||
| Airport type | Public | ||||||||||
| Owner | Colemill Enterprises | ||||||||||
| Serves | Nashville, Tennessee | ||||||||||
| Elevation AMSL | 418 ft / 127 m | ||||||||||
| Coordinates | 36°11′25″N 086°41′59″W / 36.19028°N 86.69972°W | ||||||||||
| Runways | |||||||||||
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| Statistics (2009) | |||||||||||
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Cornelia Fort Airpark (FAA LID: M88) was a privately owned, public-use airport located five nautical miles (9 km) northeast of the central business district of Nashville, in Davidson County, Tennessee, United States.[1]
The 141-acre airport was located on part of a plot of land granted to early Nashvillian Ephraim McLean for service in the Revolutionary War,[2] near what is still known as McLean's Bend in the Cumberland River in East Nashville. The airport operated from 1944 until 2011, when the city of Nashville acquired it to include it as non-aviation part of Shelby Park.
History
The airport was established in 1944 by the Colemill Flying Service and was named for World War II aviator Cornelia Fort.
On March 5, 1963, Patsy Cline was flying to the airport from Fairfax Airport in Kansas City, Kansas with a stopover at Dyersburg when her Piper Comanche crashed 90 miles from the airport near Camden, Tennessee.[3]
In the early 1950s Ernest W. Colbert bought out his partner to become sole owner and continued in that capacity (operating it as Colemill Enterprises) until selling it in 2011.[4] Colbert had been seeking a buyer after defaulting on loans of $1 million in 2005 and the second for $1.4 million in 2010 (after it was inundated in the 2010 Tennessee floods.[5][6][7]
With the 2011 purchase, the Shelby Park/Shelby Bottoms/Conerlia Fort area has more than 1,300 acres—the fourth largest public greenspace in Nashville (trailing Beaman, Bells Bend and Warner).[8][9]
Facilities and aircraft
Cornelia Fort Airpark covered an area of 300 acres (121 ha) at an elevation of 418 feet (127 m) above mean sea level. It had one runway designated 4/22 with an asphalt surface measuring 3,500 by 50 feet (1,067 x 15 m). For the 12-month period ending March 6, 2009, the airport had 30,110 aircraft operations, an average of 82 per day: 95% general aviation and 5% air taxi. At that time there were 27 aircraft based at this airport: 74% single-engine and 26% multi-engine.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "M88 - Cornelia Fort Airpark - FAA information effective September 23, 2010". FAA data republished by AirNav. Archived from the original on October 23, 2010.
- ↑ Drake, Doug, with Jack Masters and Bill Puryear. Founding of the Cumberland Settlements: The First Atlas, 1779 - 1804. Sponsored by Sumner County, TN Historical Society and published by Warioto Press, 2009, p. D8.
- ↑ "Cornelia Fort Airport - Historical Commission of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County". Waymarking.com. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
- ↑ "Tennessee Aviation Network". Tn-aviation.org. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
- ↑ Mitchell, Mike (September 11, 2011). "Cornelia Fort Airpark Has New Owner". AvStop.com. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
- ↑ Williams III, G. Chambers (May 5, 2010). "Cornelia Fort Airpark, airplanes, inundated by floodwaters". The Tennessean. Retrieved May 7, 2012.
- ↑ Pew, Glenn (May 6, 2010). "Tennessee Airpark Ravaged By Flood". AVweb.com. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
- ↑ "Help The Land Trust for Tennessee Protect the Cornelia Fort Airpark". LandTrustTN.org. Retrieved January 31, 2012.
- ↑ Garrison, Joey (March 31, 2011). "Shelby Bottoms could expand with purchase of 132-acre airpark". Nashville City Paper. Retrieved January 31, 2012.