Talkeetna Airport bicycle shop seeks five-year lease extension

A bicycle business at Talkeetna State Airport — the same patch of pavement where mountaineers stage their Denali expeditions and where flightseeing tours launch throughout the summer — is asking the State of Alaska for five more years on its lease.

Hailey DeReamer has applied to extend her lease, a 17,217-square-foot parcel at the state-owned airport. The site holds a building, two Connex shipping containers, and a temporary structure, and is leased for non-aeronautical use as a bicycle sales, service, and rental operation. Annual rent: $2,995.76 — about $250 a month.

The Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities is handling the request, which lets the state extend an existing airport leasehold without putting the parcel back out to competitive bidding.

The economic ecosystem at Talkeetna State Airport is, by Alaska standards, unusual. The National Park Service treats the airport as the helicopter transfer point for rescues off the upper mountain — rescued climbers are flown down from the 7,200-foot Kahiltna Basecamp to the Talkeetna State Airport for transfer to medical air ambulances — and as the principal base for the south-side flight operations into Denali National Park, with the majority of flightseeing companies, both fixed-wing and helicopter, based in the communities immediately surrounding the park such as Talkeetna. A bike rental shop fits in among them with a logic familiar to anyone who's driven into a small Alaska town: the airport is where the people show up, the people often need a way to get around, and a Connex makes a serviceable storefront.