Guy van Rooyen wants to make Lunken Airport cool again. He envisions the airfield, now 105 years old, teeming with excited children looking skyward at an approaching jet. He sees a smartly-dressed doorman ushering a rock star into the lobby of his luxurious boutique hotel. The lunch crowd in the terminal’s new restaurant is a mix of airplane mechanics, hikers and bikers just off the trail, and neighbors from Linwood, Hyde Park, and Anderson Township.
Under the watchful gaze of two iconic murals that have graced the art deco terminal for nearly 90 years, a vibrant new life is coming to the eastside home of one of America’s first and, at the time it was built, largest municipal airports. “The building is a jewel,” says van Rooyen of the terminal building, “and we plan to bring it back to its former glory.”
South African by birth, van Rooyen, 48, emigrated from Australia to Cincinnati in 2004. As CEO and president of vR Hospitality, he’s focused on redeveloping historical structures—the most recent being the expansion and renovation of Hotel Covington.
When the city closed Lunken’s terminal building in 2022 for “renovations,” there was a fair amount of skepticism that it would ever again open. We were just beginning to emerge out of the pandemic, and there was empirical evidence already that businesses on the margin before COVID weren’t coming back. At Lunken, the pandemic bludgeoned air traffic and the Sky Galley restaurant had shuttered. The airfield’s only commercial carrier, Ultimate Air, wasn’t returning.
Enter van Rooyen, who frequently drove by the Wilmer Avenue building as he took his kids to soccer practice. It was a red-letter trip to the pitch, he recalls, if a plane was landing or taking off. “There’s something about being that close to planes that kids really love,” he says.
When the city issued a request for proposals to replace Sky Galley, van Rooyen jumped on it. With both feet. “I don’t think any of us were prepared for what Guy proposed and what it would require,” says Markiea Carter, the city’s director of community and economic development. “But were really excited about it.”
Carter believes the project can be a game-changer for the east side, and so the city was on board from the beginning. City Council voted unanimously in December 2021 to approve van Rooyen’s conceptual design and grant the project a 30-year tax abatement.
In addition to a new 100-seat restaurant and bar, the proposal includes a three-story 50-room boutique hotel, an event center, a rooftop bar, and an aviation museum. The addition would be built behind the existing art deco terminal building, and van Rooyen was planning to open everything in 2023.
Then he suffered through what he calls “one of the worst days of my life.” He and his architect, Ron Novak of Oakley’s Drawing Dept, had been given an incorrect set of numbers relating to height restrictions that surround the working airport. “We were too high by about six feet,” van Rooyen says, clearly still feeling the sting of a year’s worth of work that evaporated in a meeting with the Federal Aviation Administration.
He doesn’t blame the FAA. Their job is safety, he says, and you can’t have a structure hanging over what the FAA terms its “area of operations.” The vR team went back to the drawing board.
Lunken offers unique challenges to developers that they rarely see elsewhere. It’s a working airport, and it’s also in a flood plain. “What you get is the FAA telling us we have to build down and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) telling us we have to build up,” says van Rooyen. He uses the word “tricky” several times but seems like a man who understands the hoops and how to jump through them.
Jaime Edrosa is well aware of the topographical idiosyncrasies of his beloved airport. He’s been the airport manager since fall 2023, achieving what he says has always been his dream job. His aviation career started in Reno, Nevada, but he moved to Cincinnati to take jobs first at Amazon Air and then at CVG, where he served for four years as the airport’s telecommunications manager.
He sits in a cramped office at a metal desk, surrounded by maps and aerial photos of Lunken—one taken before the Little Miami River was rerouted by the Army Corps of Engineers to help create the airfield. Three floors above him, two air traffic controllers keep watch on the skies. “That’s our midfield now,” he says of the river photograph. “Some call it Lake Lunken. It’s a big hole in the center and it fills up when it rains.”
The more common moniker, “Sunken Lunken,” makes it difficult to utilize much of the space on the 1,140-acre grounds. A black brick on the old terminal— the one van Rooyen plans to bring back to life—marks the spot where the 1937 floodwaters peaked. It’s as high as the base of the control tower.
The temperamental Little Miami River, persistent ground fog, and expansion constraints were the reasons why, in 1947, regional leaders decided to build a new airport in Boone County. The move south of the Ohio River still perplexes many a tourist who can’t figure out why Cincinnati’s airport is in Kentucky.
It ’s a mistake, though, to say Lunken was “replaced” by CVG. Repurposed, yes, but Lunken remains an active airfield. In fact, it’s the most active airport in Ohio, with around 125,000 takeoffs and landings a year—more than John Glenn International Airport in Columbus or Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland. Even during COVID, when business travel shriveled, Lunken was guiding 84,000 planes in and out of its airspace. Traffic has been steadily growing back since 2020.
Lunken’s business hinges on a variety of customers. Five flight schools operate on the grounds, joining dozens of charters like Executive Jet Management or Waypoint Aviation in the hangars and on the runways. Corporate jets owned by Procter & Gamble, Macy’s, Kroger, or American Financial Group are always on call. Military aircraft make occasional stops, and there’s always a stream of private aircraft touching down.
Lunken is its own economic zone with several aircraft support companies— all of them leasing space and hiring skilled workers—occupying hangars, offices, and maintenance structures. It’s also self-sustaining, says Edrosa, with Lunken collecting landing fees, land and facility rent, fuel surcharges ranging from 6 to 12 cents a gallon, and 1 percent of gross revenue from each of its tenants.
He discovered in 2023 that many of Lunken’s fees hadn’t been updated for years and were significantly below market rate, so he’s already adjusted the landing fees, started developing the facility’s first-ever strategic business plan, secured several federal grants, and welcomed the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to his campus, which in turn has increased international cargo traffic. “This is a working airport,” Edrosa says with pride, “and we are in a good position because of where we’re located to take care of growing demand.”
When van Rooyen reopens the old terminal, his businesses will provide yet another revenue stream—though the airport’s future remains up in the air. Last year, the Cincinnati Futures Commission suggested city leaders should consider leasing Lunken to CVG, noting the need for more than $100 million in capital improvements and only a modest profit (roughly $800,000 in FY 2023). The airport, the commission said, is operating at just half its potential and perhaps a new landlord with extensive aviation experience is better positioned to unlock it.
While city leaders discuss this proposal, operations at the airport continue to move forward. Lunken closed one of its two runways in July 2024 and secured a grant to pay for pavement removal and improve airfield safety. It’s planning to launch a comprehensive airport drainage study that Edrosa hopes will result in acreage he can eventually market.
Plans are also underway to remove an unused and tumbledown hangar. Both van Rooyen and Carter are, with no prompting, complimentary of the positive tone in lease negotiations, which they believe will wrap up this summer. Carter hopes the agreement will fall within the parameters approved by City Council in 2021, thus needing no further action by that body. Demo work could begin this fall, with the project opening in late 2026 or early 2027. “We recognize the critical asset Lunken is,” Carter says, “not just as a gateway to the east side of our city but as vital to our service sector, corporate headquarters partners, and others.”
Carter also notes the benefits that will accrue to neighborhoods with close proximity to Lunken. “This is a substantial economic development project that doesn’t displace anything or anyone,” she says. “The neighborhoods we’ve heard from are excited, especially with the hospitality venue and the return of a restaurant.”
Count H. Jane Sites as one of those neighborhood residents. The East End Area Council’s liaison to City Hall has been a Lunken neighbor for nearly 20 years. Before speaking to Realm, she says, she polled 15 neighbors to give a more complete view. Memories of Lunken, she says, always start with the kids. “The excitement of watching them come and go and the noise,” she says, noting the adults perhaps didn’t appreciate the noise in the same way.
Sites recalls coming to Lunken Airport Days last Labor Day weekend, saying the closed terminal and the airport’s “dilapidated state” saddened her. She’s been attending Lunken Advisory Board meetings ever since, and she recently was appointed to a vacant seat on the board. “We’re all in for the rebirth of the Sky Galley and the hotel,” she says. “Lunken needs to regain its sense of place.”
Sites hopes the city will address any traffic and noise issues promptly. The neighborhood, she says, loves the nearby Lunken Playfield and golf course, so they need to be preserved. They also appreciate and use the hik ing and biking trails so “we would like assurances that the sweeping views of the runways we have now will not be blocked by tall buildings or hangars.”
Community input includes desires for the new development to employ neighborhood residents and for the event center be available for general public rentals.
Saying he understands the community perspectives, van Rooyen speaks reverently about the history that’s graced Lunken’s airfield over the century. Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis here in 1927, less than three months after he took his single-engine plane across the Atlantic Ocean. Amelia Earhart touched down two years later in her fire-engine red Lockheed Vega, appearing in the first-ever Women’s Air Derby. Jimmy Doolittle, Neil Armstrong, and Howard Hughes have graced its runways. Air Force One has dropped in a few times.
This storied past will be celebrated in a small museum that van Rooyen will house in the terminal, improving on one that was there before. In its prime, the terminal provided a roof over not only travelers and a museum but also offices for several flight schools, a pilot accessories shop, a mortgage company, a police substation, and even a dentist’s office. It was a bustling place.
It looks tired and faded these days. Your ears note the silence, and your nose picks up a faint odor of jet fuel mixed with a stale must. But your eyes behold two iconic features: the William Harry Gothard murals and the bright yellow two-seat Aeronca C-3 Master (labeled at the time “the flying bathtub”) that’s suspended from the ceiling.
The murals will stay, but the vintage airplane will need to find a new home. “I really don’t want a 1,000-pound structure hanging there,” says van Rooyen with a nervous laugh. “But we’ll make sure it’s saved. That’s a part of our discussions with the city.”
He’s also committing to preserve the period iron guardrail garnished with embossed rosettes that lines the upper-level balcony. That will lead to 36 hotel rooms dominating the new addition on the terminal’s back side facing the runway. The museum is also planned for the second floor. “We want there to be a feel to the lobby, a volume of space that makes you feel like you’re walking back in time to the days when The Beatles came here,” he says of the Fab Four’s 1964 visit.
The Sky Galley restaurant, which was to patrons’ left as they entered the terminal from Wilmer Avenue, may be relocated, van Rooyen says. “We want to be sure all the major points in the development have easy sight lines to the field, so relocating the restaurant to the right might be a better position,” he says. “More work to do, though, on that.”
And it won’t be called The Sky Galley. There are bigger fish to fry than settling on a restaurant name or theme right now, but van Rooyen is looking to create an establishment that’s less like a national chain and more like Coppin’s at his Hotel Covington. He says the new dining venture might have two concepts, one higher end for the dinner crowd and the other more casual for lunch. There might be a walk-up counter to serve patrons on the bike trail or families who want to watch the planes and eat a sandwich al fresco.
Similarly, van Rooyen envisions the new boutique hotel and event center as a prime space. He plans to use construction materials and a color pattern that closely aligns to the existing terminal, with two-story wings connected at 90-degree angles to the existing terminal and ending at the taxiway fence line. A courtyard suitable for outdoor events will separate the wings. Towering above it all will be the original Lunken Airport tower with the painted black brick just outside its window, which will be converted into a lofted presidential suite with a bedroom on the top level and living space below. “It will have the commanding view of the field,” he says.
Like his vision of a restaurant similar to Coppin’s, van Rooyen envisions a hotel that has the features, service, and polish of Hotel Covington. He mentions two rock stars, Joan Jett and Billy Idol, who stayed in Covington when they performed at Riverbend on May 21 and suggests future entertainers would value the convenience of Lunken, especially if they have a private jet parked on the tarmac. “We want to exceed what we’ve done at the Hotel Covington,” he says. “We want a luxury footprint that provides an experiential stay, infused with the history of the field and of aviation.”
Everyone hopes that van Rooyen’s investment will encourage further development in the east end, especially along Kellogg Avenue. There’s little inviting scenery between the airport and Rivertowne Marina as motorists enter the city from the east. This Lunken project could be a catalyst for wider development, looking to recent housing construction along Eastern Avenue as evidence that the east side can be popular again.
“Just one caveat to that,” says van Rooyen, repeating with a knowing smile. “FEMA wants you to build up because it’s a flood plain, but the FAA wants you to build down.”