North Brunswick Airport
North Brunswick Airport? Yes, North Brunswick did once have an airport!
I’m interested in the township’s history. Last month I posted Garden of Eden, a Home News supplemental article telling of the early days of the Hidden Lake Community – Riverbend was a part of that project.
From the same supplement, originally published Thursday, July 5, 1979, this article tells the fascinating story of the North Brunswick Airport.
Airport Took Off in a Cloud of Controversy
By PATTI DOMM
Home News staff writerNORTH BRUNSWICK — The corner of Jersey Avenue and How Lane, now an industrial park, was once Walt Gingrich’s hard-won airport.
The small airport, owned by Gingrich and two other pilots, was established in 1946 by the now semiretired New Brunswick resident and his partners as a flight of fancy, and a real-estate investment.
Pleasure planes and small commercial aircraft had been barred from flying over the area during World War II, but shortly after the “vital zone” restriction was lifted, groundbreaking plans for the approximately 75-acre airport started.
Walt Gingrich, who was part owner and operator of the old North Brunswick Airport still is an active pilot, keeping his plane at Kupper Airport in Manville. Home News photo by Mike Derer
A legal monkey wrench was thrown in by the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose tracks are just the other side of Jersey Avenue. It didn’t want aircraft tangling with its high-tension wires, and sued to block the State Aviation Commission’s approval of the airport license. Three years of litigation followed, with Aeromotive Corp. of New Jersey Inc. and the state Aviation Commission as co-defendants. The battle began in two lower courts, ending up in the state Superior Court, Gingrich said.
Meanwhile, a court-ordered stay halted the airport’s construction, and Gingrich, who was heavily burdened by court costs, moved his family to an old farmhouse on the property.
Runyon Van Sickle, president of the airport corporation, and expert witnesses testified small planes taking off wouldn’t come close to the wires, according to a 1946 Home News clipping.
The railroad brought in realtors to testify that the airport presence would hamper development of “200 acres of high class industrial sites” nearby.
The final court ruling ordered runways to face the other way, but allowed the airport to keep its license. Gingrich says his opponents, seeing the verdict would go the same way in further hearings, “threw in the towel.” Gingrich still has the foot-high stack of testimony, and proudly claims prospective airport operators have come from all over the country to study the testimony before “getting their feet wet.”
The 77-acre airport boasted 35 hangars, and other private and commercial pilots found ground area to tie-down their planes on the open field.
North Brunswick Airport was a “fixed-base operation,” Gingrich said, “listed in the top 137 flying schools by the FAA.” The facility offered flying, rental, instruction, storage, sales, repairs, a ground school, and even a link trainer, which is a facsimile of a plane’s control panel used in instruction.
Army ROTC flyers, pilots logging hours for Army Reserve, and pleasure-seeking aviators rented planes from the small airport. Commercial flights, carrying freight and passengers from local industries to Newark and New York City made frequent stops, Gingrich recalled.
The landing strip also serviced a helicopter, used by politicians and businessmen. One passenger was Jimmy Hoffa, who used the airport when visiting union offices in the area.
In the early 1960s, the airport that winged its way into North Brunswick in a cloud of controversy was sold to Jersey Avenue Industrial Park, but even then it remained in the eye of a stormy battle.
When the land was sold, the township zoned some of it for residential use and some industrial, and when an ironworks and then a railroad spur suddenly materialized near homeowners’ back yards, more fighting broke out.
Gingrich left the airport business in 1960 to buy race horses. His hangars have since been sold to Kupper Airport in Manville. His horses are gone too, now, but the one-time pilot is still active, and keeps a small four-passenger plane at Kupper. The instructor, who says he taught a lot of people the ropes of flying, still enjoys teaching.
“I’d take a kid out of the woods, who’s never seen a car or a plane, and trust him with my plane before I’d let him use my car.” Flying’s that easy,” he said.
In the cockpit of his plane, Gingrich eagerly explains the complicated control panel to interested listeners. Besides being a ready-instructor, the pilot shares his flying enthusiasm on and off the ground, and recently insisted on a reporter taking a flight to finish an interview. While flying over the old North Brunswick Airport site last week, Gingrich pointed to taxi trails left years ago by planes using the airport. What is now Airport Drive was once the main runway, he said.
And what probably were open fields from the air, lined with runways and scattered with airport buildings and a few tied-down planes have become a busy patchwork of roof tops, streets, and automobiles.
Recycling
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There is a recycling pickup today.
The pickups of plastic, glass, newspapers, and cardboard usually occur between 8 AM and 10 AM on alternating Thursdays. Riverbend is in Zone 3.
As of October 2007, North Brunswick’s recycling materials were picked up by Central Jersey Waste and Recycling, Inc. of Trenton, NJ. You can reach them at 609-656-4200.
Learn more about Middlesex County’s Solid Waste Management programs, including the schedule for Household Hazardous Waste Days.
Please be a responsible citizen and recycle!
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