A plane takes off from the Baker City Airport on Sept. 5, 2023.

Baker City’s airport is an important part of the city’s property holdings, and one with considerable potential to boost the local economy.

The recent announcement that Blue Mountain Community College is launching a drone flight training program here is an exciting example of that potential.

BMCC, based in Pendleton, will run a ground school for the drone program at its Baker City campus Sept. Oct. 14-25, with the flight school at the city-owned airport from Oct. 28-Nov. 8.

This initial program is modest, limited to four students.

But BMCC hopes to expand the course to accommodate up to 20 budding drone pilots next spring.

The connection between drones — also known as unmanned aerial systems, or UAS — is obvious. And there’s a nearby example that Baker City could emulate, in the UAS Range at the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport in Pendleton. It’s one of three UAS test ranges in Oregon; the others are at Warm Springs and Tillamook.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, during a recent visit to Pendleton, touted the potential for the test range, and the businesses and high-paying jobs associated with it, to bolster Umatilla County’s economy.

Baker City’s Airport can be inconspicuous for people who aren’t pilots. The facility is about 3 miles northeast of town, just east of Interstate 84.

Among its advantages is that the city generally has not had to spend much money on major improvements such as repaving the runway and taxiways.

The Federal Aviation Administration typically pays most of the cost for big projects. In 2021, for instance, the FAA picked up 90% of the tab to fill cracks and seal the main runway and a parallel taxiway, and the Oregon Department of Aviation paid 9%. The city’s 1% share, amounting to just $3,130, wasn’t cash but rather administrative help from city employees.

An even bigger job, rebuilding the half-century-old pavement at the airport’s south apron in 2019, cost almost $1.5 million. The FAA paid most of the bill and the state covered the rest.

In the summer of 2017 the city rebuilt the apron near the office of Baker Aircraft Inc., which handles fuel sales, aircraft rentals and flying lessons, and installed a 6,000-gallon fuel tank.

The work cost $1.64 million, and the FAA and a state grant paid the entire amount.

Those and other projects help to make the airport an attractive place for businesses and programs such as Blue Mountain’s drone flight school.

Michael Russell, a member of the city’s budget board, is a proponent of the city using the airport as an economic driver.

“It has a tremendous draw to bring student enrollment, new high-paying jobs, new housing, new residents, all that,” Russell said. “Money that the airport can make.”

The prospects are indeed promising.

City and county officials should make the airport a priority in their efforts to attract new businesses and the benefits they bring to the entire community.