A YES vote on Proposition 410 would uphold the Town’s approval of a privately funded airfield at Perkins Ranch. The first phase is simple: a small-scale training airfield designed for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University flight training.

The first phase includes one 5,000-foot runway, a taxiway, an aircraft apron, tie-down space and basic safety equipment for small Embry-Riddle training aircraft. It is not a commercial passenger airport, a cargo hub or a jetport. There will be no control tower.

Phase 1 is the foundation for a longer-term aviation and technology campus. That larger vision has four phases, but only the airfield has been approved. Each later phase would return to the Town for separate review and approval.

What is the proposed Perkins Ranch Airfield?

A small airport or airstrip in a desert landscape at sunset, with a building, airplanes on the tarmac, and mountains in the background, and a helicopter and airplane flying in the sky.

Embry-Riddle aircraft already fly through the region from Prescott Regional Airport. The airfield would not create that training demand. It would give those flights a better place to go.

Today, many training flights travel over or near the more populated parts of Chino Valley. The Perkins Ranch Airfield would move much of that activity east, over the ranch and away from most homes.

If voters approve Proposition 410, these flights that utilize the Prescott and Seligman Airports for training would follow the Granite Creek corridor rather than the main Chino Valley corridor. Final routes would remain subject to FAA requirements, weather, safety and Town conditions.

Moving training flights away from town

Map showing the area around Prescott, Arizona, highlighting Prescott Airport, Perkins Ranch Airfield, Chino Valley, Granite Creek, and nearby towns Seligman, Ash Fork, Williams, and Paulden, with major roads and the Prescott National Forest.

Flight operations

Aviation numbers can sound more dramatic than they are.

One takeoff counts as one operation. One landing counts as another. A touch-and-go counts as two operations because the aircraft lands and takes off again.

So one student, one instructor and one aircraft making a round trip from Prescott, including one touch-and-go at Perkins Ranch, can be counted as four operations even though it is a single training flight.

The Town’s development agreement will establish the definitions, limits and reporting requirements before flight activity begins.

Illustration of an airfield with a small airplane on a runway in a desert landscape, mountain range in the background, with signage indicating Phase 1 of the Perkins Ranch Airfield project, focusing on flight training with a 5,000-foot runway, taxiway, small aircraft, and a note that only this phase is approved.

Today’s airfield, tomorrow’s opportunity

The airfield is the beginning, not the end. It opens the door to future aviation, research, and manufacturing opportunities, while leaving every future phase subject to its own Town review and approval. See below for more details.

An infographic illustrating future development phases of the Perkins Ranch Airfield, including manufacturing, research, innovation, and logistics, with illustrations of hangars, research buildings, and aircraft.
An infographic illustrating future development phases of the Perkins Ranch Airfield, including manufacturing, research, innovation, and logistics, with illustrations of hangars, research buildings, and aircraft.