Peoria looking into possibility of building airport near Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. site
With Peoria’s adoption of its tentative $950 million budget, city leaders have big hopes for the future including a municipal airport.
On May 2, the City Council approved to allocate $500,000 for an airport feasibility study. The study is intended to analyze the cost of building an airport in northern Peoria near the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
TSMC is a Taiwan-based company that focuses on producing computer chips. In 2020, TSMC announced plans to open up a hub in Arizona. Now, three years and $40 billion later, the project has turned into the largest foreign investment in Arizona history, opening the doors for hundreds of jobs and potential economic prosperity.
With TSMC nearby, there is a possibility for a cargo-focused airport. Though, according to Drew Taplin, who recently earned his Master’s in Urban and Environmental Planning from ASU, “It does seem interesting that you would build an entire airport solely for cargo. I don’t know how many examples of that exist.”
While campaigning last year, Mayor Jason Beck claimed that bringing a municipal airport into the area would be beneficial for Peoria’s economic development. Beck even went as far as to compare the possible success to the idea that Scottsdale’s airport is, as he put it, a jobs hub. As of December 2014, the Scottsdale airpark was estimated to have a record-breaking 54,100 people employed. That in mind, Beck mentioned his goal is to bring at least 15,000 to 20,000 jobs to north Peoria.
According to the final budget as decided in early May, in order to maintain the town’s financial position, Peoria must be continuously growing its revenue producers. With economic development remaining a key focus, redevelopment is said to be one of the council’s top priorities.
Development in mind, building an airport seems to align perfectly with the city’s priorities. The budget even claims that an airport built in northern Peoria would transform the town into a hub for economic activity such as enterprise.
In addition to the feasibility study, the budget also accounts for more than $82 million in the Capital Improvements Program (CIP) for the purpose of connecting Lake Pleasant Parkway to the airport. A CIP is a budget that allocates already existing funds and expected revenues to support a variety of projects dedicated to infrastructure improvement.
Though, the conversation of bringing an airport to the town is not an unfamiliar one. In May of 2022, Beck told The Arizona Republic “I have a financial model, a plan that shows that if we built a 7,500-foot runway or a Scottsdale-level airport that’s actually in there, what that would give us the ability to do is drive approximately $2.5 billion of economic impact just in that one area alone.”