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Update, Aug. 7, 11 a.m.: This story has been updated to say that individuals or companies will likely take on the cost of constructing assets such as hangars or terminal buildings, according to airport authority member Trip Addison.

For the Richmond Hill City Council, the idea to build an airport came about with little fanfare. 

During a closed-door meeting in September 2022 to discuss real estate, Chris Lovell, the city manager, and Trip Addison, vice chairman of the Bryan County Development Authority, suggested the council consider a new municipal airport. The council went on to discuss hiring a consulting firm to study the feasibility of the idea, City Clerk Dawnne Greene recalled in an email. 

Within months, Lovell signed a $146,000 contract with a South Carolina-based consultant for a study to examine the feasibility of an airport. 

The analysis, completed in August 2023, painted an encouraging picture. It found that shortages of hangar space and landing access at the region’s other airports and Coastal Georgia’s booming economy could justify a new, 328-acre airport in Bryan County with a single, 5,500-foot runway and 14 hangars.

Declaring the study’s conclusions “favorable,” the council directed Lovell to “take all necessary steps to further explore” the construction of an airport, which the firm, Holt Consulting Company, estimated would cost more than $128 million.

Three years later, that goal is closer than ever to reality.

RICHMOND HILL-BRYAN COUNTY AIRPORT AUTHORITY

• Ben Taylor, Bryan County Administrator
• Gene Wallace, Bryan County commissioner
• Marty Daniel, Founder of Daniel Defense
• Russ Carpenter, Mayor of Richmond Hill
• Chris Lovell, Richmond Hill City Manager
• Glen Willard, Former Bryan County commissioner
• Christian Rushing, Local flight school owner
• Eric Rice, Local pilot
• John Seckinger, Vice President of Dozier Worldwide Cranes
• Ryan Purvis, CEO of Bryan County Development Authority
• Trip Addison, Vice Chairman and Treasurer of Bryan County Development Authority Board of Directors

An 11-member Richmond Hill-Bryan County Airport Authority board, a who’s who of local political officials and business leaders, is scheduled to be sworn in on Aug.18. Additional studies to determine a site for the airport and its economic impact are underway. Another, on the environmental impact of the facility, is also in the works.

Once the assessments are completed and the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) approves the plan, ground for the new facility can be broken, perhaps in as little as three years.

Addison told The Current he is “highly confident” that, at the end of the day, Richmond Hill and Bryan County will have a new airport. 

Yet as those championing a new airport forge ahead, some crucial claims about the airport’s costs and benefits to city and county residents appear inflated, if not inaccurate, according to interviews conducted with officials and documents examined by The Current. 

The airport’s supporters say that the planned airport will generate a “windfall” of tax revenue for Richmond Hill and Bryan County’s nearly 53,000 residents. They also say construction of the estimated multimillion dollar facility will be paid mostly with federal and state funds and cost city and county taxpayers nothing. 

The feasibility study commissioned by Richmond Hill officials in 2022 and examined by The Current shows, however, that federal and state funds cannot be used to foot the estimated $56.7 million cost of constructing terminal buildings, hangars and revenue-producing facilities such as parking lots for the proposed airport. 

As airport proponents begin making their cases publicly, questions about the pros and cons of a new airport are heating up, many of them stemming out of frustration with what some see as excessive secrecy marking deliberations about the project.

Corey Foreman said he is not sure if Richmond Hill and Bryan County need a new airport. Asked why, the chair of the county’s Democratic Party committee replied:

“Because we don’t have anything from the elected officials to tell us.”

Does Coastal Georgia need another airport? 

Local aviators surveyed as part of the feasibility study commissioned by the city council said there was no longer sufficient space to store or operate their planes in Coastal Georgia. They said that they are being pushed out of Savannah/Hilton Head International as Gulfstream and other airport tenants expand their operations at the airport.

“SAV is running general aviation away from their airport,” complained local aircraft owner Ken Royal, citing what he said was its lack of hangar space to shelter and service aircraft. “I must therefore move or sell my airplane.” 

Royal’s response was typical of the 93 responses Holt Consulting Company received when it sent surveys to 400 registered aircraft owners in Bryan, Chatham, Effingham, Liberty and McIntosh counties for the feasibility study. Lovell, the city manager, is now one of those aircraft owners. 

Of the responses Holt Consulting Company received, 64% indicated that they would be interested in relocating to a new general aviation airport in Bryan County, while an additional 22% said they would “maybe” be interested in relocating. 

Brian Leftwich, a Savannah-based aircraft owner who works for Gulfstream, said he received the survey from Holt but did not complete it. But he echoed the criticisms of many of those who did. 

“The shortage of these hangars has caused people to have to drive a considerable distance to their aircraft,” he said in an interview with The Current. “The [Savannah] airport has become very busy, so the people that unfortunately get pushed out are the smaller airplanes, and that is exactly what’s happened.” 

A water tower in Richmond Hill, on July 25, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/CatchLight Local

Many residents of Richmond Hill, a city of nearly 20,000 people, are unfamiliar with the aviation industry, so the necessity and desirability of a new airport may not be as evident to them as it is to advocates of a new facility. They worry about the increased traffic, noise and unregulated development that will come along with a new airport in their town. 

“Isn’t there already a private airport in Georgetown, Hinesville, Brunswick, Jekyll, and St. Simons that has been servicing the local area for a while?” asked Megan LeAnn LaFollette, writing on Facebook. “Why all of a sudden we need a brand new private airport specifically in” Richmond Hill?

But for Addison, the vice chairman of the development authority who, along with Lovell, initially introduced the idea of an airport to the city council, a new airport offers the city and county an opportunity to raise tax revenue. That, he told The Current, is the main reason he is promoting it. 

It is important, he went on, for local governments to find ways to reduce taxes for its residents by finding taxable assets such as airplanes or aircraft hangars:

“I view the airport solely as an asset that comes with very little burden but a very large taxable base that is taxed at personal property [rates], and that helps reduce the burden that homeowners have to pay on their households.” 

To date, Addison, Lovell and other county and city officials have not publicly cited any estimates of how much additional tax revenue Richmond Hill or Bryan County would receive as a result of the airport, or if that revenue would go towards the local share of financing of the airport. 

Under a contract with the development authority tendered in May, Georgia Tech is conducting a fiscal analysis of the proposed project to determine projected tax revenue and economic impact, Addison said.  

Who pays for the airport?

The “new airport justification/feasibility study” carried out by Holt Consulting Company projects the total cost of constructing the proposed airport at $128,419,000, an estimate that includes land acquisition and construction of the runway, terminal and hangars. 

The airport’s supporters have offered assurances to Richmond Hill and Bryan County taxpayers that they will not be stuck with the bill sometime in the future.

“There is the potential that there is zero cost to the taxpayer for the entire project,” John Seagraves, chair of the development authority’s board of directors, told members of the development authority, the county commission and the city council at a special called meeting in June.

Indeed, under the newly passed law that created the airport authority — House Bill 763 — it is empowered to issue bonds to raise funds for the construction of the airport. Investors who purchase the bonds would be repaid with the proceeds from the airport’s operations.

But the law says county and city taxpayers cannot be held responsible for the authority’s debts. “No liability or debt against the aforementioned city or county shall be incurred in the exercise of any powers granted by this Act,” the statute reads.

This does not mean, however, that the planned airport will necessarily pay for itself.

At a special called meeting of the city council on February 8 to approve a resolution supporting legislation creating the airport authority, council members were told that the county and city taxpayers would bear some of the cost.

The cost estimates considered by council members that day were “very rough,” according to minutes of the meeting, which was open to the public. The federal government would cover 70% to 90% of the airport’s total costs, with the remaining 10% to 30% split among the City of Richmond Hill, Bryan County, and the county development authority.

Pressed by council members for an estimate on the airport’s total cost, Lovell, the city manager, did not offer one, even though the feasibility study had put it at $128.4 million.

He told members it was “likely to be at least two years” before “more concrete cost figures” for the project were known, the minutes state. However, a “guesstimate” of the local share of the airport’s costs was put at “somewhere under $5 million.”

The minutes of the meeting do not indicate any mention or discussion of any additional costs to the county and city of any new infrastructure adjacent to the airport that will be needed to accommodate increased traffic and congestion.

Addison has put forward a different picture.

In June, at the special called meeting of the county commission, the city council and the board of directors of the development authority to discuss the airport, Addison said the FAA would fund 90% of the airport’s costs, with another 5% likely to be picked up by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). 

The airport authority would be the sole government body responsible for financing the local share, Addison said, through bonds that will be paid off by the airport’s operating revenue. 

“The airport authority has the burden of financing their portion of the airport, the burden of carrying the load. Moving forward, it’s not going to be on the county commission to have to deal with this,” he said at the June meeting. 

In projecting the airport’s operating revenue and expenses, the feasibility study concluded that the airport would consistently bring in a positive net operating income of roughly $300,000 per year in the long run.  

However, while Addison said that the majority of the total cost of constructing the airport would be covered by FAA and GDOT funds, the estimates in the justification and feasibility study told a different story: The local cost will total $62,467,150 — nearly half the cost of the entire project.

The FAA does not provide federal funds to general aviation airports for the construction of terminal buildings or hangars, the feasibility study notes, which account for close to half of the estimated total costs for the project. 

According to Addison, individuals or companies will likely pay for the construction of terminal buildings or hangars, which will then become taxable assets for Richmond Hill and Bryan County. Anything the airport authority or other government entity pays to construct will be tax exempt, he said.

Public kept in the dark, trying to catch up

To date, many Richmond Hill and Bryan County residents feel that much of the discussion and many crucial decisions about the proposed airport have been kept out of their view.  

The veil over plans for a new airport began lifting in earnest in mid-March, when three local state representatives — Ron Stephens (District 164), Jesse Petrea (District 166), and Lehman Franklin (District 160) — introduced legislation calling for the creation of the airport authority, a mandatory step for any airport construction in Georgia. Soon, county residents were scrambling to find out details of the project. 

The Richmond Hill Community Information group on the social media website Facebook was quickly flooded with questions about the location of the proposed airport, how much it will cost and why the city needs it.

Still, crucial information has not been disclosed publicly. The feasibility study, completed in August 2023, has not been released, and the possible locations for the new airport have not been named. 

Also, appointments to the airport authority called for under HB 763 were made without opportunity for public input, although Richmond Hill City Council did put out a call for applications from residents.

City and county officials continue to avoid public input and discussion about the proposed airport.

At the special called meeting of city, county, and development authority officials in June to discuss the airport plan, members of the public were not allowed to raise questions and concerns about the proposal. 

During the meeting, Gene Wallace, a Bryan County commissioner, acknowledged the public’s misgivings about the project. The reason, he said, was that it was not yet aware of the benefits of a new airport. 

“This is not a popular option with the public at all, so I think we’re going to have to do a real good job of educating those folks why this is a good thing for Bryan County,” he said. 

Still, Ryan Purvis, the development authority’s chief executive officer, assured attendees at a “state of the community” breakfast, also in June, that a forum for public comment about the airport project would occur in this month. He did not indicate who would sponsor it.

The agenda for the airport authority’s first official meeting on Aug. 18 does not allocate time for public questions or comments. It does, however, set aside time for a closed-door session to discuss real estate — the same venue used by the city council in September 2022 when it authorized the feasibility study for a new airport. 

“Why were no town hall meetings held to gather input from residents near the proposed site?” Richmond Hill resident Keith McCants asked in one post on Facebook. “What safeguards exist to prevent political influence from overriding community concerns?”

Location, location, location

Indeed, possibly the most contentious issue looming over the proposed airport is its location. It will be the one that determines who benefits most from the facility and the economic spillover that its champions promise. It will also determine who bears most of its costs, whether financial or environmental. 

A site selection study commissioned by the city council, the county commission and the development authority is underway, but the 2023 feasibility study locates the new airport south of the intersection of I-95 and U.S. Highway 17. 

That swath of land is part of a 2,191-acre parcel owned by Raydient, the real-estate development arm of Rayonier, the international forest products company that owns approximately 1.75 million acres of timberland in the southern United States. The entire parcel is valued at roughly $5.5 million, though the study says the airport will only require 328 acres. 

Whether county and city officials asked Holt Consulting Company, the author of the feasibility study, to base their projections on the I-95/U.S. 17 site or the firm did so on its own is not known. 

Supporting the authority and its efforts to get the airport built are area residents with considerable influence, including Richard Kessler, a real estate developer and force behind The Kessler Collection of themed hotels and resorts, including Savannah’s Plant Riverside District. 

Stephens, the state lawmaker who co-sponsored the airport authority bill, said at the June meeting of the city council, county commission and development authority that Kessler has “an interest with the Belfast Keller Road” and “some other development I won’t speak about because we got cameras in the back.”

This spring, The Kessler Collection broke ground on two new Richmond Hill Marriott-brand hotels at the I-95 exit to Belfast Keller Road. The Kessler development is just minutes from the airport site identified in the feasibility study.  

When — and if — members of the airport authority field questions and criticism from city and county residents, they can expect some resentment and frustration. 

Writing on Facebook, Michael Tillery seemed to sum up the emotions of those who view the airport project as yet another example of residents being kept in the dark not only about how the airport and the land surrounding it will be developed but about most of the decisions of elected and unelected officials affecting their lives and their community. 

“The perception is that [officials] hold plans close to the chest to ensure no one else benefits by/from positioning themselves adjacent to projects,” Tillery wrote in a Facebook post. “It makes it very difficult for entrepreneurs to position adjacent to this project to benefit from increased economic activity.”

“The people that develop in Bryan County and in Richmond Hill in particular appear to be less than transparent.”

Lily Belle Poling is a rising junior at Yale. She is a summer 2025 intern at The Current GA with support from the Ida B. Wells Society in collaboration with the Nonprofit Newsroom Internship Program created by The Scripps Howard Fund and the Institute for Nonprofit News.

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Type of Story: News

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.