GARY — After a two-year hiatus, Gary will revive the city’s popular air show on July 10 and 11 next year, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and aviation officials announced Tuesday at Marquette Park Pavilion.
In 2013, the air show was canceled because the federal sequester had placed popular military flight teams on hiatus, and last year the show was moved to Fair Oaks Farms in Newton County before being cancelled due to muddy fields.
Freeman-Wilson said she got in touch with longtime air show manager Rudy Malnati about a month ago, and discussions started in earnest.
“We were always of the mind that the lakefront was the best location,” she said. “In our minds, it always made sense to hold the show over the water.”
Freeman-Wilson was joined by representatives from Sage-Popovich, the Gary Jet Center and B. Coleman Aviation — all tenants at Gary/Chicago International Airport — who will partner to organize the show.
The announcement comes a week after the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority, which has operated the air show since 2007, decided to halt plans for a 2015 South Shore Air Show.
SSCVA chief executive Speros Batistatos said acts have yet to be secured and the authority board is “still evaluating what, if any, future the air show will have.”
Batistatos decided to move the 2014 show from Gary to Fair Oaks to try to make it more profitable, but heavy summer rains made the fields too muddy to hold an event. Since 2007, the SSCVA has lost an average of $150,000 annually on the event, but that was substantially less than Gary’s losses in the several years it over saw the air show.
Freeman-Wilson said a budget is still being firmed up, but corporate sponsorships are key to making the event affordable for the city.
“The preliminary response has been positive,” she said. “We’re confident we can do it.”
Malnati hopes to book some high-profile acts, such as the Blue Angels, and plans to have the schedule set by mid-December.
Batistatos said the SSCVA supports the air show coming back to the lakefront and will assist with public relations and advertising.
“The mayor is partnering with private businesses at the airport to put on the show,” he said. “I think it’s a brilliant idea.”
Rather than run the air show, he said the SSCVA sees its money and energy better spent in trying to attract tourism and hotel business to Northwest Indiana from August through May, when there isn’t a lot of tourism spending locally.
Contributing: Post-Tribune correspondent Carrie Napoleon