In Business: Bemidji Airport Hosts ‘Business After Hours’ Event with Chamber

You may think of airports as just the planes, baggage claims and vacation time, but you might not remember the businesses or hospitals that need airports to function or the schools needed to teach pilots how to fly. Last week, the Bemidji Regional Airport held a “Business After Hours” event with the Bemidji Area Chamber of Commerce meant to teach the public about what goes into running an airport other than just daily flights.

“Working along with the Chamber, we kind of turned it into an aviation expo-type of event to spotlight a lot of the users of the airport, tenants, stakeholders,” said Bemidji Regional Airport Authority Executive Director Kyle Christiansen.

The Bemidji Chamber has been holding monthly “Business After Hours” events for many years, but the idea of teaching about the local airport and bringing attention to its business partners resulted in one of the Chamber’s biggest after-hours events yet.

“We gave a lot of—some airport tenants, other users of the airport a chance to kind of spotlight their own companies as well,” Christiansen added. “So instead of just having this be about the airport, it’s about everybody that really needs the airport, uses the airport a lot.”

Along with highlighting other businesses, the airport also wanted to hold the event to just connect with the public and meet with them face to face.

“We have 450 members to come out and just see some people you haven’t seen before, network and how maybe people can work together, and then come out to places like the airport where you may not get this kind of access like we had tonight,” explained Bemidji Area Chamber of Commerce President Scott Turn.

The Bemidji Regional Airport has daily commercial service to Minneapolis but it’s also involved with other businesses, from Bemidji Aviation and teaching flying classes to being a site for Sanford Health medical flights and helicopters.

“It takes a lot of businesses to make things happen out here, not only from just flight support and those types of things, but also the education of aviation, trying to find the next leaders and workforce,” said Turn.

“We haven’t hosted an event like this out here for a while,” stated Christiansen. “So it’s good to kind of remind a lot of these business owners, members of the community of what the airport does for the community and all the companies that rely on it.”

The next Bemidji Chamber “Business After Hours” will be on Tuesday, November 11 at Northwoods Lumber Company.