THIS time, the last thing the Lake Macquarie Miniature Air Club (LMMAC) wants to do is take off.
For more than 40 years, the club and its 70 members have been flying remote-controlled aircraft at their home base on Griffen Road at Teralba - but as the local council looks to attract new adventure tourism businesses to the city the bunch of self-proclaimed 'geeks' could be moved on.
Lake Macquarie City Council has put out an expression of interest for the site at Teralba, where the club maintains the grounds in park-like conditions, fills potholes and clears away illegally-dumped rubbish.
There aren't many other slices of paradise that could fit the club's needs, member Tanya Felton said.
"It would actually be quite difficult, we have infrastructure out there with stringent requirements and two runways," she said.
"We can't have houses too close-by in case a plane does something silly like not respond to controls, it could cause damage or hurt people.
"Here the trees and powerlines are far enough away from our field to make it easy - moving would be a drama and there would be a significant cost involved regardless of where the new location is."
The Teralba site is one of three the council has identified with the potential to become home to adventure tourism attractions; anything from zip-lining to aqua golf, water parks or rock-climbing.
A council spokeswoman said the closing date for expressions of interest has been extended to July 20.
"We are not able to determine possible impacts for the LMMAC until the EOI closes and any submissions received for the Teralba site are evaluated," she said.
"Prior to the advertising of the tourism EOI, council advised the LMMAC of its proposal in May 2022.
"Council acknowledges that LMMAC has been a long-term user of part of the Teralba site and is willing to work with the club to discuss future options including identifying alternate sites that might be suitable.
"It was agreed that discussions on possible impacts to the LMMAC operations can be put on hold until council has considered the suitability of EOI responses to the Teralba site and has more certainty on whether a proposal is realistically going to proceed or not."
Ms Felton said the club has submitted its own EOI.
"The best outcome is that we get to stay here, that council recognises this is valuable to the community, it does attract people from outside the area and decides to invest in helping build that up to something quite special," she said.
"People think we're a quiet group of geeks that will quietly disappear but we won't do that."
