An Airport Rises Out of Lake Erie I: Burke Lakefront Airport-A Brief Visual History
- Paul Soprano
- May 3
- 9 min read
Please note that this article has been revised and updated from its original version published in 2020.
Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL), located downtown on the shores of Lake Erie, is a general aviation airport and an FAA-designated reliever to Northeast Ohio’s primary airport, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE).
Opened in 1947 on a former landfill and reclaimed land with a 2,000-foot dirt runway (extended to 3,600 feet), the airport used to see much more traffic (both general/corporate aviation), as well as regularly scheduled airlines, than it does now, most notably by helicopter airline, Cleveland Air Taxi (click here for a detailed story of this little-known airline: https://www.aviationcle.com/post/cleveland-s-helicopter-airlines), TAG (click here for a history of this airline: https://www.aviationcle.com/post/tag-airlines-the-world-s-busiest-airline), Wright Air Lines, based at BKL, and the first incarnation of Midway Airlines in 1979-80).
In 1957, Burke added a 1,600-foot hard-surface extension to its 3,600-foot dirt runway extending its length to 5,200 feet. A parallel taxiway was completed in summer 1959, and a new 6,200-foot parallel runway was opened in 1967, and eventually expanded to 6,604 feet and equipped much later (in 1998!) with an instrument landing system (ILS).
Major improvements were made to the airport during the tenure of Mayor Thomas Burke, and in 1958, the Cleveland city council voted to name the airport in his honor, officially dedicating it on October 9, 1960.
Below is a series of aerial images of BKL from 1957-2018 (First 5 photos, courtesy of Cleveland Memory Project, and Aerial Agents via Cleveland Scene for the last one).
Burke's New Terminal
Ground was broken for a new passenger terminal at BKL on February 20, 1959. The elegant mid-century modern passenger terminal, designed by architect John A. Rode Jr., was dedicated in October 1960, and opened for airline travel in early 1961. It had 3 ground-level gates, a five-story air traffic control tower and a 2nd floor restaurant with panoramic views of the airfield and lake. For a more detailed history of the drama surrounding the restaurant, click here: https://www.aviationcle.com/post/an-airport-rises-out-of-lake-erie-ii.
In April 1962, Morris S. Gisser from the Cleveland Coin Machine Exchange presented an interesting proposal for a Downtown Air Terminal in Cleveland. Gisser was executive director of Metro Airport Terminal Corp., which proposed to build downtown air terminals in other major cities, including St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Washington, DC.
The $6.5 million facility, to be built in the Erieview urban renewal district, was intended to be a central location for tickets, reservations, and airline offices. This stand-alone complex was to be similar to the downtown air terminals in Manhattan and San Francisco, where passengers could purchase tickets and check baggage before boarding buses or helicopters that would transport them to the actual airport.
Gisser presented his proposal to the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) which agreed such terminals would provide more efficient and convenient service. The street level of the airway building would be occupied by airlines operating service from airports in Cleveland. Tickets and reservations would be handled there. On a second-floor balcony all other lines would be represented. It appears as if a hotel/office building and one or two parking garages were to be included in the project.
"The airway building is especially useful in cities served by more than one airport, such as Cleveland... Passengers need not be concerned which airport their flight operates from since they will begin their trips from the downtown terminal,” said Gisser. (Cleveland Press, April 14, 1962)
Salesmen from the Metro Airport Terminal Corp. began contacting airlines, and Gisser said, “We have cleared land available in the midtown area. If three major airlines agree, we will start immediately." This ambitious project was never realized.
Interestingly, a similar project was proposed in 1954. On August 4 of that year, representatives from 10 of the 12 major airlines operating in Cleveland met with Lawyer Sheridan Horwitz and Architect Max Ratner to discuss the project and review some preliminary drawings. The initial projection estimated that the building, encompassing 600,000 square feet, would cost approximately $6,000,000. The proposed location for the air terminal was at the southwest corner of Euclid Ave. and E. 18th St. (today's location of The Edge apartment building and the former location of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland's building, designed by renowned architect Edward Durell Stone), on a large plot owned by Sam Magid and associates. The plans also included provisions for a 200-room hotel.
In anticipation of continued airline growth at BKL, the terminal was almost doubled with a 400-foot west concourse in late 1968, adding more modern ticket counters and two more gates. A "southeast concourse" with four additional gates, along with an attached hotel was also proposed, but never built. It was originally hoped that feeder airlines such as Lake Central, Mohawk or Piedmont would start service from BKL, but those larger local service carriers never did.
Midway Airlines Arrives (and Leaves) & Wright Moves Some Operations to Hopkins
In the wake of airline deregulation in the United States, another brand-new airline chose Cleveland’s downtown Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) as one of its initial destinations from its home base at Chicago’s Midway Airport (MDW), launching service on DC-9-10s on November 1, 1979. Five flights were offered on weekdays and four on weekends between the two close-in airports. Several airfare gimmicks, now allowed in the newly deregulated environment, included 33-cent (worth about $1.43 in 2024) standby fares on weekends, and normal one-way fares ranging from $33 ($143 now) to $49 ($212 now) versus the lowest available price of $67 ($290 today) one-way. The other involved a pre-paid book of 10 tickets with prices guaranteed for a year.
Midway’s marketing pitch for Cleveland was “Call Midway and kiss Hopkins goodbye.” Less than a year later, however, Midway kissed Burke goodbye instead. It seems that the smaller airport on the shores of Lake Erie was subject to fog and other adverse weather conditions and did not have a precision instrument landing system that caused 33 Midway flights to divert to CLE during the winter season. This caused the airline to incur additional costs in moving passengers between the airports as well as flight delays.
Midway had already been forced to move to Hopkins May 1, 1980, while the main runway at BKL was being resurfaced. Passenger surveys did not show a strong preference for BKL over CLE, so the airline decided not to move back to the downtown airport. This kindled renewed debate on the future role of Burke Lakefront airport which consistently operated in the red and was (and is still today) subsidized by Hopkins.
Another airline made a move to Hopkins after operating solely from Burke Lakefront Airport for its entire existence, Cleveland’s hometown carrier, Wright Air Lines. It announced in May 1980, that it would add service from CLE to the Ohio cities of Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, while decreasing but continuing these services at BKL, along with its main route to Detroit City Airport (DET).
A Visual Tour of Burke's Terminal (all photos taken by author on August 29, 2020):
Airline Service Returns
Airline traffic peaked in 1979 with a bit under 500,000 passengers, while only 22,590 passengers used the airport in 2019. A public charter company based at the Akron-Canton Airport, Ultimate Air Shuttle (UE), started two to three roundtrip flights on weekdays from BKL to Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport (LUK) in 2015. This was the first scheduled airline service in nearly a decade.
Flights were suspended in March 2020, due to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. They resumed in July of the same year but were once again halted on September 22, 2020. The company made another attempt in April 2021, only to ultimately discontinue all scheduled services as of December 16, 2021, due to the overall decline in demand for business travel.
A New FBO Terminal
Investment in facilities at BKL continued despite an overall decline in airport operations. In 2016, Landmark Aviation, now Signature Flight Support, completed a new $16.5 million hangar and attractive new fixed base operation (FBO) terminal at Burke.
Today, the main terminal at BKL also serves as the home to the International Women’s Air & Space Museum and several other corporate and city government tenants.
The Future of Burke Lakefront Airport
Controversy has brewed for decades on whether ana airport is the best use for lakefront property, particularly in light of the sharp decline in traffic and the annual deficit Burke generates at the expense of Hopkins Airport. Many articles have been written about the future of Burke Lakefront Airport including Garret Forst's academic thesis, "Airport Infrastructure in the Shrinking City: Planning for Smart Decline in Cleveland’s Regional Airport System and Its Role in a Dynamic Urban Future," and "Lies, Damn Lies and the 450 Acres of Prime Real Estate That is Burke Lakefront Airport" in Cleveland Scene. And several proposals have been floated about alternative uses for the property, including by the Green Ribbon Coalition and DVA Architecture.
In September 2024, the city of Cleveland finally released two studies that examined the economic impact of closing the airport, as well as a potential closure’s effect on aviation operations in the region. The airport layout plan by CHA Consulting identified the costs and hurdles of closing Burke to air traffic and can be found here. While the economic impact study by Econsult Solutions, can be accessed here. It concluded that closing Burke would result in only “relatively low true loss of economic activity” for Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. The studies made no recommendation about whether the airport should close; that decision will left to Mayor Justin Bibb or future city leaders.
“These studies are crucial in helping us understand the feasibility and potential benefits of transforming Burke Lakefront Airport into a space that better serves our community,” Bibb said in a statement. “The findings have reinforced my long-held belief that closing Burke is both possible and economically advantageous for Cleveland.”
If a decision is ultimately made to close BKL, it will take years to implement, some estimates are a decade or more. There will likely be lawsuits and wrangling with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The ongoing discussion about the future of BKL will be the topic of upcoming articles. Stay tuned.
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Love these articles I found about Cleveland aviation history. I remember eating at The Mark in the late 1970s & flew Wright (FW) CV600s many times between CMH/BKL. I actually was in the airline industry. I started Sept. 4, 1979 in CMH with Allegheny Commuter (Fischer Bros. Aviation Galion, OH) before being hired & retiring from USAir/USAirways. The industry was so much fun back then!