Paul Hoback will have to manage fast growth. He may also deal with the New College land issue – or not.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: July 16, 2025
Host: Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport will have a new director, come October—the first new boss in 31 years.
Paul Hoback Jr.
Johannes Werner: At a special meeting on Friday, the SRQ board approved the contract with Paul Hoback Jr. His base salary will be $450,000, in addition to up to 25 percent performance bonus, $1,500 a month car allowance and retirement benefits. In total, Hoback’s compensation can come close to $600,000.
That is significantly below the $900,000 Rick Piccolo, the outgoing airport director, is making.
Piccolo says the base salaries are “in the same ballpark” and attributes the difference to the long years he has worked for the Sarasota airport.
Rick Piccolo
Rick Piccolo: My salary is $515,000. His will be $450,000. The rest are all retirement benefits. I don’t know what that total is, but he’s in the ballpark with me is how I would look at it. But I’ve been here 30 years, so it took a long time to get to that level.
JW: Hoback comes to Sarasota after a stint as vice president and chief development officer of the Pittsburgh airport.
Piccolo will continue to assist Hoback as a consultant. He leaves behind a fast-growing airport—one of the fastest-growing in the nation, in fact—and $25 million in reserves. The airport is not just about commercial airlines anymore. Private aviation is a big revenue generator, and the airport just added two new tenants—Pilatus and Elixer—that will manufacture aircraft and aircraft parts here.
Piccolo says the biggest tasks for his successor are getting a new garage built and planning for terminal expansion.
RP: We just approved, in January, a master plan for a parking garage, and that will be the next big project going forward. That will have to be done in the next couple of years. There’s other projects as well, depending on—if our growth continues the way it is, then it’ll be, “What’s the next step in terminal development?” as well.
JW: And then, Hoback has to manage the new tenants’ expansion.
RP: Pilatus Aircraft, which is the sixth largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, is going to be building a new maintenance and sale center out there. I think that’s another $40 million development. Then, two years from now, they’re slated to build an assembly plant there and be building PC-12 aircraft out there and employ over 300 people.
JW: Piccolo also left Hoback a political minefield of sorts, due to his recent entanglement in campus politics. Piccolo became a strong advocate of selling land the airport owns to neighboring New College, which has been leasing its east campus in a long-term and low-cost lease from the 1960s through the year 2056.
New College enjoys a long-term lease of land (red and yellow) owned by the airport. Piccolo pushed for a sale, but federal authorities blocked it.
At one point, Piccolo zoomed into a New College board of trustees meeting, explaining why the sale would be good for the community—while sitting at a conference table at College Hall, next to New College President Richard Corcoran. The land sale to New College crash-landed after the Federal Aviation Administration blocked the deal, citing the low price of $11.5 million and the airport’s future growth needs, among others.
Piccolo says this was solely his own initiative, trying to end a deal that does not make much financial sense for the airport anymore. He also said the airport does not need the New College land.
Piccolo says this is not a minefield. His successor could choose to do just nothing about the New College land.
RP: I don’t know if that’s going to be landing on his desk or not, because the sale discussion was not approved by the FAA, and we haven’t done any more with that. There’s still 30 years left on the lease, so that’s one where you don’t have to do anything. You can just sit there and wait for the lease to run out and see what happens 30 years from now, which probably will be after Paul is gone as well.
JW: Piccolo also emphasizes that the initiative to sell the land to New College was just his own and did not initiate at New College.
RP: It was a proposal put forth by myself to New College in an effort to solve a problem before I leave. But, as I said, they got 30 years left on the lease, and it’s somebody else’s problem now, sometime in the future.
JW: Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
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