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Marquette’s airport may soon have a new name.
The airport is currently named after Kenneth Ingalls Sawyer, a Marquette County Road Commissioner who was instrumental in establishing the region’s first commercial airport between Negaunee and Marquette, and then an expanded facility near Gwinn.
The K.I. Sawyer airport at Gwinn became the K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in 1955, and a new airport for public use was constructed near Negaunee shortly thereafter. The Air Force decommissioned the base in 1993, and commercial operations were relocated to the site a few years later, using the name Sawyer International Airport.
As part of the airport’s current renovation project, Kim Hiltachk of the Hiltachk Marketing Group has suggested the change, noting that other airports across the country have recently opted to include the name of their cities or regions in their titles, to make their locations clear to travelers.
Hiltachk has offered two suggestions: the Upper Peninsula Michigan Regional Airport, or the Marquette Regional Airport.
The Marquette County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing on the idea at its meeting this afternoon. See the agenda, and link to online coverage of the meeting, here.
