When the latest short list of replacement sites for Friedman Memorial Airport, located between Hailey and Bellevue, has been announced, it will mark an important step along a path that Sun Valley and the rest of Blaine County have been treading for more than three decades. That path leads to the closure of the commercial airport, an ending not everyone seems to have accepted as unavoidable.

The new short list is part of the Phase I report of an Environmental Impact Statement being conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration on a replacement airport scheduled to be completely built by 2016. Yet Sun Valley Ketchum Chamber and Visitors' Bureau Executive Director Carol Waller still argues it's premature to say Friedman Airport eventually will close. "I think the forthcoming information from the FAA will give us a much different picture that's based on facts," she says.

The uneasy death of Friedman stems from clashes involving local politics and economics, the environment, convenience, safety and reliability of air services. And now, as Sun Valley Mayor Wayne Willich points out, "The whole dynamic of the process has changed, because the FAA has engaged a consulting company to review it. "

The company, Los Angeles-headquartered commercial aviation specialists Landrum and Brown, was hired by the FAA to initiate the four-phase EIS. Much of the Phase I groundwork had already been done locally in studies that concluded the airport must be moved from its current site, where mountainous terrain disrupts conventional instrument landing systems that allow pilots to land in bad weather, causing frequent airport closures. Also, Friedman breaches FAA design standards for the heavier and faster aircraft that have begun to use it in recent years.

In 1976, a grant application to the FAA by airport officials acknowledged "the narrow width of the valley and the high mountains surrounding the Hailey Airport limit its present or future use by large transport aircraft. " A new site was considered in a 1983-85 master plan, a 1990 feasibility study, a 1994 update of the master plan, another update in 2004, and a site selection and feasibility study conducted in 2005-2006.  

"We're not building for some future airplane," airport manager Rick Baird emphasizes. "We're trying to meet design standards for planes that are flying here today and have been flying here for some time. "