On November 5, 2026, San Pedro Town leadership issued a formal public stance regarding ongoing plans for a new airport development on northern Ambergris Caye, clarifying that the municipal government fully supports the construction of additional aviation infrastructure to serve the island’s fast-growing northern residential and commercial zones, but firmly opposes any proposal to permanently shutter the long-operating John Greif II Municipal Airport in the town center.
San Pedro Mayor Wally Nunez pushed back against circulating misinformation that claimed the town council was preparing to sell the existing airport’s runway, emphasizing that local leaders are not blocking the new northern airport project at all. “We recognize that the northern part of Ambergris Caye is seeing rapid population growth, new development is accelerating there, and we do acknowledge that a dedicated airport facility in that region will become a necessary piece of infrastructure to support that expansion down the line,” Nunez confirmed in a recent interview with local journalist Paul Lopez.
Nunez further outlined that hundreds of local small businesses, from tour operators and waterfront hotels to souvenir shops and island transportation services, have structured their entire operating models around the central airport’s convenient location, which delivers a steady stream of arriving domestic and international visitors directly to the town core. A forced closure of John Greif II Airport would redirect all air traffic 10-plus miles away to the northern end of the caye, cutting off the town center from the predictable foot traffic that local enterprises rely on to stay profitable, and would effectively cripple the existing downtown economic ecosystem that has served as the island’s tourism backbone for decades.
The San Pedro Town Council’s formal position argues that the island’s long-term development roadmap does not need to force a false choice between new infrastructure for expanding northern communities and preserving the established economic lifeline that sustains the historic town center. Local officials are now calling on national planning bodies to evaluate a dual-airport operating model that would allow both facilities to serve distinct user bases, rather than phasing out the centrally located municipal airport to make way for the new northern development.