Former 356th Fighter Group restaurant to become storage hangar

Castle Aviation to remodel former 356th Fighter Group/Whiskey Ranch building in Green.

Green plans are in the works to replace the former 356th Fighter Group restaurant with a new facility for Castle Aviation.

The air freight and charter service wants to consolidate its operations at Akron-Canton Airport. The company currently uses several buildings at the airport.

Castle’s plans call for using part of the former restaurant to house offices. The existing building would be attached to a 50,000-square-foot storage hangar. An apron and taxi way would connect the hangar to the airport’s runway system.

The proposed office building and hangar would be one of the largest buildings on the airport property. Castle wants to build the storage hangar on a section of the former restaurant’s parking lot.

Green’s Planning and Zoning Commission meets Wednesday and is set to review the proposed project. The Planning and Zoning Department staff has recommended conditional approval of the plan, contingent on final engineering and approval by airport and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Michael Grossman formed Castle Aviation in 1986 and has operated at Akron-Canton Airport since 1999. The company bought the restaurant property last May and has been working on development plans.

The World War II themed 356th Fighter Group opened in 1989. It closed in January 2014 after a broken water pipe in the sprinkler system flooded the dining room. The location reopened two years later as the Whiskey Ranch, but that business closed in September 2017.