Mayor: next Lambert chief may be a local
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said the city’s search for the next Lambert-St. Louis airport director will begin locally.
Richard Hrabko, the current director at Lambert, announced last month that he intends to retire once a replacement is found. Before he was hired to run Lambert, Hrabko was director of the county-run Spirit of St. Louis Airport in the Chesterfield Valley.
“I’m going to look right in our back yard first,” Slay said Tuesday after a ceremony to mark the opening of two new airport restaurants. “Because Dick, he’s one of the best guys we’ve seen here in a long time. And he came right here from St. Louis.”
Slay said he will look for someone who is visionary, can run operations and understands the importance of customer service.
One name that won’t make the final cut will be that of Slay’s brother, Gerard, senior deputy director at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. State law prevents the mayor from appointing a sibling.
How is it that the city of St. Louis still has control of Lambert? It sits in Hazelwood, Bridgeton, St. Ann, Overland, and Kinlock. Do you think that anyone in St. Louis gives a rip about how the airport impacts a homeowner in St. Ann?
Because the city owns it. It is surrounded by other cities, but the airport land is owned by the City of St. Louis. As long as they don’t relinquish rights to it, they will always own it. An airport is always going to impact the cities around it. Some have lost taxable real estate with expansions, but others have benefited immensley from the business tax base that is brought by the airport, especially Berkeley, edmundson. FYI, St. Ann, Overland do not border the airport. Hazelwood, Bridgeton, Berkely, Edmondson, Woodson Terrace. Hazelwood mostly has commercial buildings bordering the airport and they are happy about that because it creates good revenue for them.Bridgeton and Berkely may not bee too happy because they have lost land to expansion.
Lastly, if you choose to live close to the airport then you have to expect the inevitable. That used to be an open land that is why the City of St. Louis went out there to buy the land and build the airport.