GPS Tracking an Old Airport
Where businesses take wing
By Deborah Gates
Staff Writer
SALISBURY — A European company specializing in solutions to monitor temperatures in refrigerated haulers picked a good time to birth a North American offspring, at least in Wicomico County.
Not only is vehicle tracking a growing market, but renovations have just been completed on the old terminal building at the Salisbury-Ocean City:Wicomico Regional Airport, readying the county’s first “business incubator” for new or expanding business tenants.
The first start-up to land in the renovated structure is Ameriscan, the new North American headquarters of the Bonn, Germany-based firm that specializes in vehicle monitoring… Full Article Here:
Aside from the fact that this guy is as “good looking” as I am (read: smooth on top), what does this entry possibly have to do with GPS Tracking?
The first thing that caught my eye was the overall theme of the article and the picture. My city, Colorado Springs (KCOS) built a new airport terminal a few years back. It’s one of the few tax initiatives I ever voted for in my quarter-century plus in this burg … we needed it, even though traffic levels at that time hardly seemed to warrant it. Left behind, however, was a well-built two-level terminal in an excellent location … directly adjacent to motels, restaurants, what passes for eat-west and north-south traffic arteries and some major aerospace corporate office. The old terminal was also in sight of Air Force Space Command, Army Space Command and US Northcom’s shiny new headquarter buildings on Peterson Air Force Base … a not bad real estate location as real estate locations go. Oh, and hundreds of parking spaces, well-built access ramps and executive aircraft hangars and fixed base operators … just in case a prospective business wanted to use their own aircraft. So what did our brilliant city leaders do? Bulldozed the building flat … according to rumor because the rental rates at the new terminal were way too high for many airlines and they were afraid the old terminal would somehow go back into airline service. The capacity for human cluelessness never ceases to amaze me. The city owned the building and owns the airport. So they couldn’t control what tenants went in the building and what aviation-related activities they engaged in? The building was in good to excellent shape and already fully amortized. thousands of square feet of prime business-oriented property flattened and trucked to the landfill. Sad.
(the parking lot currently serves the families of arriving and departing Fort Carson troops on their endless deployments to Iraq … the city doesn’t want troops in he terminal letting people see uniforms, guns and wounds … this war is for the underclass to deal with … they board their charter flights up and down a ladder in the rain while the Broadmoor visitors come and go in the new terminal, untroubled by reality … money has its privileges … but I guess that’s a subject for a different blog)
Back to my original subject, Wicomic County and Salisbury/Ocean City Maryland had a similar problem on their hands … a surplus airport terminal. So, did they bulldoze it? Nope, a little smarter than the city fathers here … a whole lot smarter. They took the excellent location and looked for businesses worth having. Ameriscan, the company feature here looks like someone to watch. There are goodness knows how many companies willing to track your truck, not as many who track your rail car or multimode container, but how many are there who actually care about your shipment … the whole reason the carrier is moving in the first place. I’m glad to see a company like Ameriscan bringing actual business-related services to the world of GPS Tracking, and I love the intelligence behind their new home.
Tags: gps, gps tracking, airports, real estate, business starups
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