GBA Member Henry Isaacson Receives Triad Business Journal’s Legacy Award for Long-Standing Contribution to Triad’s Aerotropolis
Since the early 1960’s, attorney and GBA member Henry H. Isaacson has exhibited the significance of innovation and creativity in legal practice. His contribution was recently recognized by the Triad Business Journal who awarded Isaacson with the TBJ Legacy Award. According to the Journal, the Legacy Award honors a person who has contributed to the economic well-being of the Triad through real estate development, finance and planning.
Having practiced law in Greensboro from 1961-2022 (after serving in the Judge Advocate General’s Dept. of the U.S. Air Force), he founded the firm which is now Isaacson Sheridan in 1980.
As a prominent legal leader in Greensboro’s real estate industry, Isaacson’s practice covered various areas of zoning and land use regulation and his advocacy soon became the foundation for today’s booming and ever-growing aerotropolis, commercial landscape.
When University of North Carolina business professor John Kasarda started talking-up the idea of building an aerospace hub at airport in the early 2000s, Henry Isaacson immediately became a strong advocate and resource. Isaacson was chairman of the Piedmont Triad International Airport Authority board at the time and recruited a committee to encourage fellow board members and the business community to embrace professor Kasarda’s idea of making an aerotropolis out of a city that has (and values) its own airport.
According to a recent Triad Business Journal article announcing Isaacson’s receipt of the TBJ award, “pitching the idea wasn’t an easy sell at first because it involved measures such as buying a neighboring golf course to ensure the airport-controlled land on which industries could build, and convincing the state Department of Transportation to build an unusually large bridge over I-73 to connect future industrial land to runways.
However, man years later, PTI qualifies for the term, hosting some 8,600 jobs and an annual economic impact put at $8.6 billion as a hub specializing in aerospace.
Because of Isaacson’s powerful contribution to developing a major new economic sector and for his other work in economic development in the Triad, the honor of the Triad Business Journal’s Legacy Award is well-deserved.
Henry Isaacson poses at the airport where an internal street is named in his honor (from Triad Business Journal)
“The success that the Triad is witnessing today with the growth of Honda Aircraft Co. and others, and the recruitment of Boom Supersonic and Marshall Aerospace, can be traced back to Henry Isaacson’s advocacy and leadership,” Triad Business Journal President and Publisher Mark Gendle said. “But he’s also had an undeniable impact on the places we live, work and play — contributing to the quality of life we enjoy. He has truly influenced the economic and real estate landscapes for the better, making him a worthy recipient of this honor.”
– Legacy Award honors key figure behind booming aerotropolis, Triad Business Journal (27 Oct. 2023).
