In mid-September, Steve Grossman was named executive director and CEO of the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, becoming only the second executive director since the JAA and the Jacksonville Port Authority split effective Oct. 1, 2000. Prior to joining JAA, Grossman spent 17 years as director of aviation for the Port of Oakland.
Grossman got his undergraduate degree from New York State University College in urban geography and in 1977 he earned his mater’s degree in urban planning (with an emphasis on airport planning) from Michigan State.
Friday, Grossman sat down with the editorial staff of the Daily Record to talk about his first few months in Jacksonville, his plans for the Authority and his impression of the city thus far.
Why did you take the job?
I was asked that by every board member, but in different tones. In reality, there were a number of reasons. On the pro side, it gives me an opportunity to work in an aviation only authority and implement a higher philosophy I have developed over the years.
I didn’t have to move. I had a good gig in a beautiful area, but I was also looking for an authority that would allow me to run it like a business.
In my one-on-ones with the board, I told them if they are looking for someone to award contracts to their buddies, I will not do that. This is a good board and they are all good business people. But, I don’t have any friends here and I don’t care who gets contracts.
An important part of the job is to set up a fair and transparent process. When that is set up, everyone knows you are on the up-and-up.
I am coming to an organization that wants to be run like a business and one that has four airports that make up the best system I have ever seen because they don’t overlap.
This is a great place to live. Financially, in California you can enter the retirement system when you hit 55 and they give you every incentive to move. When I got calls from the headhunter, I originally said “no.” Then I got calls from the airlines and they said I ought to consider the job. For me, at my age, quality of life was very important. Being the resident golf nut in the aviation industry, it (a new job) had to be south of the Mason-Dixon line and left only about six cities and Jacksonville was one.
What do you think about Jacksonville so far?
I cannot really express how good it is to live here. Over the years, I have made good friends with lots of them in Florida airports and they would kid that Jacksonville wasn’t in Florida, but in South Georgia.
Very quickly after I got here, I found out what they meant. Within two days, my wife and I were talking about how friendly everyone was and not just the business people, but the clerk at the store and banks.
If an airport in the south means southern hospitality, I’ll take it. This city has so much going for it.
What is the next focus for the Jacksonville Aviation Authority?
I want to start off by talking about Cecil Field. One of the goals I’ve set for this year is the development of a strategic plan for Cecil. One of the many things
I’ve learned, is that there are tremendous resources in the city. All of these resources want to help us and they are all pulling in different directions. So, I have to harness all of these good resources into a team, so that we are all moving in the right direction.
To do that, we are developing a strategic plan for Cecil and the plan, at its essence, consists of three plans: a plan for local, a plan for state and a plan for federal.
At the local level, we are going to look at the local resources we have. We have to look at how the City and the Authority cooperate. The thing that I know is that if you have a potential client coming in and they detect dissension between the City and the Authority, they are going to play you off one against another big time. That’s the reason to be of one mind as we go in.
From what I’ve seen, the people that are talking to us, and there are a lot of them, are almost all aviation-related folks. I’ve got all I can do with these aviation tenants, much less, worrying about anything else. My view is that we can cooperate with the City in serving these businesses.
There is only one thing that makes Cecil Field unique, and that’s the airfield. If you need an airfield, then you belong at Cecil on my side of the Commerce Center. If you don’t need an airfield and you have no relationship to an aviation business, then it doesn’t matter where you go in the city. My property is no different than any other piece of property in the city, so why not work with the City to put that business on the other side of the line where it belongs. We’ve got to be working together because as we build volume at Cecil Commerce Center at its biggest form, it just draws other companies in.
What have been some of the biggest challenges during the first few months? What’s it been like?
Let’s face it. What I took over was a pretty good internal organization and an organization that definitely had its challenges externally. One of my major goals is to build every bridge I can find to the community. It doesn’t matter what aspect of the community it is.
In the four months I haven’t said “no” to anybody as far as showing up. I will talk to anybody and I’ll listen to everybody. I think the Authority is mature enough now to understand that and I have nothing but encouragement from the board to get out there and do that.
My basic philosophy — and this is nothing written down or official — is that we hold these assets in trust for the citizens of Jacksonville and we need to keep that in mind as we do our business.
So as we go after tenants, it’s OK, all things being equal, if I have two tenants who want the same thing, who is bringing the most jobs? It makes no difference to the Authority, because we don’t make nickel one off employees, but the city does. And so, if we have a choice, let’s decide it that way.
In the final interview, I was asked to give a 20-minute presentation on my vision for the next five years. What I thought about was, what does an airport mean to a community in general? So what I talked about was this Authority should be the best economic engine it could possibly be for the community. And then, once you’re on the road to achieving that, you have to tell the people about it. I think we would all be shocked, about how many people never fly, so they never use the airport. They only know what they read. Well, as we get better, we need to tell people about it and educate them on what we do and how it helps them. That side of it is what we’re all about.
One of the things I’ve got going right now, is a task force looking at putting together a local preference policy for all of our spending. So, if I’m going to bid a construction contract, a local firm should get bid preference. It’ll cost me a little bit more money, but that’s a valid cost of doing business.
A few months ago, JAA hosted a summit of airline representatives who help plan routes. How did it go and have you received any feedback on potential new routes from them?
That summit was a huge success and I’ve never seen it done anywhere. You can’t get these guys out of their offices ... they sit there and stare at numbers all day. To the extent that we got them out, showed them the area, so now when a route decision has to be made and it’s close, they’ll remember that trip and they’ll say, “Oh yeah. We saw all the corporations, we saw all the great vacation facilities that are in Jacksonville... we think we can make money in Jacksonville.”
That’s my pitch to the airlines, always has been. I care more about their bottom line, because if they make money in my city, they’re going to add more flights. We routinely follow up with all of the attendees and we’re talking to them about specific routes. We’re talking to Air Tran, for example, about San Juan (Puerto Rico) and we’ve crept up that list. It wouldn’t surprise me within the next year if we have service in San Juan. We’re always talking to Jet Blue about beefing up their New York and Boston service, because that’s where people want to go. As they said, all of the airlines within the next few years are going to be focused on their hubs. So okay, we’re working with Continental on more service into Houston, working with Southwest... I’d love to get a few more flights to Las Vegas out of Southwest. Or Denver. If I can beef up the service to the hubs, as volume picks up, as the population grows, as the economy grows, the airlines will see more people flying into those hubs and justify it. We just want to build it up. We are a great domestic airport, that is our role in life, we will have some international service but it will never be a big deal.
A lot of effort on the part of the port authority and the transportation authority is underway to position Jacksonville as a predominant East Coast shipping hub. How doers air cargo fit into that picture?
Honestly, I don’t think it’s a big issue.
Air cargo in this country has evolved to the point that FedEx and UPS carry 90 percent of it. In Oakland I was blessed — or cursed — with the fourth- or fifth-largest FedEx hub in the country. Here, I’ve got a pretty decent FedEx operation — three or four flights a day — and UPS has two or three flights — they are carrying the local cargo. That’s about what Jacksonville is going to be from an air cargo standpoint.
There are fewer and fewer independent air cargo operators. A lot of them have gone out of business with this recession. Even the scheduled carriers, mostly European and Asian, have grounded a lot of their cargo aircraft.
Who knows what happens in the next big uptick in the economy. It may come back but it’s not where our bread is buttered.
We are going to look at how we can do better in our air cargo operations but it doesn’t play a big part in our revenue. It’s basically a service to our business community.
I just see a sold operation but not one that’s going to grow dramatically.
If I’m going to put scarce marketing dollars somewhere, first they are going into passenger service, without a doubt. Equal to that is the development of Cecil Field. That’s what’s going to benefit this community.
Unlike a lot of students, you appear to have chosen your career path early in your collegiate career. How did you come to that decision?
Before I was a teen I was into aviation. By the time I was 10, I was a student of World War II aviation history. I was in the civil air patrol by the time I was 12. (Ed. note- Info on the civil air patrol can be found at www.gocivilairpatrol.com) I’ve always had this interest in aviation. After two years in the civil air patrol, my mother put her foot down and said, “You are not going to fly.” I was a good, obedient son, but I was pissed. Here I was going to civil air patrol once a week drilling and going through an hour of class time and now I wasn’t going to be able to fly? So this was a way to be involved in aviation. By my sophomore year in college I knew I wanted to be in charge of an airport. The thing that really hooked me is, in between my freshman and sophomore year, my dad was an electrician in New York City, and they had a program for the sons of members who were going to college where they would employ you as an apprentice over the summer. My first summer they assigned me to the new Pan Am terminal at JFK. So I spent the summer watching the new 747’s come and go from JFK. I was just hooked.
As you look toward the future, how do you handle variables out of your control, such as increased baggage fees and security measures that affect ridership?
If you look historically, I’m a big believer in studying history and trying not to repeat the same mistakes. The traveling public has adapted to security measures. You saw it in the ‘70s when people thought if passengers had to go through security, no one would fly. That wasn’t the case. We saw the same thing after 9/11. The “hassle factor” got more than I’ve ever seen it. As the hassle factor came down people’s confidence came up and we didn’t miss a beat.
We are going through something similar now. But even now, it’s mostly mental. The hassle factor is not there. It’s not there in Jacksonville. I keep looking for the lines. I can’t find them.
We are all going to get used to it. It’s all real. It’s all necessary. It’s not going to deter people from flying. Now if you are flying from Jacksonville to Miami, you might think about it. If it gets to be a hassle, if you can drive it in three-five hours, you think about it. People are still going to fly.
How we deal with those things is, as they happen, you take customer service into account and you do everything you can to mitigate any negative customer service impacts.
Where do you live?
Tapestry Park. It’s very cool, it’s a new neighborhood and it’s very European. We live right above a retail store. The first Saturday we were here, at 5:15 in the morning there was all this noise and about 5:30 there it had grown to a roar. It’s a running store and they were sponsoring a race.
I am 20 minutes from everywhere.