The closure of Coventry Airport after 90 years has left many questions about what exactly will happen to the land, who'll move in there and when.

The airport officially ended all flight operations on May 9, before formally shutting down on June 11, according to the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Take That were the last ever passengers on the final commercial flight prior to closing, when they flew in for their Circus Live Tour date at Coventry's CBS Arena.

The airport opened in 1936 and was then called Baginton Aerodrome. Passenger flights to European destinations ran from there between 2004 and 2008 but a permanent terminal was denied after a lengthy battle fought at two public inquiries, a planning appeal and in the High Court.

WizzAir and Thomsonfly stopped their passenger flights and in 2009 the airport was put up for sale. The Rigby Group took over ownership of the airport in 2010, running commercial flights and Sir Peter Rigby said he hoped to reintroduce scheduled passenger flights at a later date.

But in February 2021, a joint venture between Coventry City Council and The Rigby Group proposed a new gigafactory called Greenpower Park to replace the airport. A gigafactory is a huge industrial facility dedicated to producing batteries for electric cars and drones.

Outline permission was approved in March 2022 by Warwick District Council for Greenpower Park at the Baginton site, on the city's border with Warwickshire. The plans also include the demolition of existing structures and creating a new main road to access the development.

Confirming the future of the site, detailed planning permission was granted by the district council in April. But there are still questions over who will invest in the project and some opponents believe the whole idea of a gigafactory is "for the birds."

Coventry City Council insists that Greenpower Park will keep the city 'on the cutting edge of innovation' and is set to deliver up to 6,000 jobs.

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A spokesman for airport owners The Rigby Group previously said: "Coventry Airport has submitted an application to the CAA to remove the airspace currently surrounding the airport, together with formal notification of the intention to cease runway operations on 11 June 2026.

"As required an accompanying action plan was also provided to the CAA, setting out the operational steps to be completed as part of the process.

"This procedural submission, first envisaged when local planning approval for Greenpower Park was granted in 2022, enables the next phase of infrastructure work for the site to proceed."

The spokesman continued: "Greenpower Park is a joint venture between Coventry City Council and Coventry Airport. The £23 million Investment Zone funding allocated by the West Midlands Combined Authority supports the first phase of development, focused on 30 MVA of new power infrastructure to service future occupiers.

"Runway operations will be phased out in line with the approved infrastructure delivery schedule.

"Greenpower Park will provide land and infrastructure for advanced manufacturing and clean-energy technologies. Once operational, the site is expected to support thousands of new jobs across the region. Further updates will be provided as infrastructure works progress."

The park lies within the Coventry and Warwick Investment Zone (CWIZ), a key strategic area of nearly 250 hectares (616 acres) straddling Coventry City and Warwick District. It consists of four sites: Greenpower Park, SEGRO Park Coventry, Whitley South and Whitley East.

But Greenpower Park has proved divisive, with local parish councils, including Baginton and Bubbenhall, both raising objections and questioning the "overall safety of a battery gigafactory that is not in an isolated and controlled area with its own road and rail infrastructure."

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In December 2025, concerns were raised that there was only a slim possibility of there ever being a gigafactory on the site.

Cllr Pam Redford told Warwick District Council: "In more than three years, there have been no serious offers from any end user, and there is still no confirmation of serious interest.

"This site will remain green belt if no confirmation of an end user comes forward to progress the build, and at this time nothing other than a gigafactory can be built on it without fitting the criteria for very special circumstances.

"So in effect, you are being asked to make a decision on what is now a very slim possibility of a gigafactory coming forward. This current application is no more than an attempt to keep the outline plan alive."

Cllr John Payne said the fact there is not yet an end user is not a big problem. He argued: "A lot of councillor colleagues have mentioned over and over again the point about there not being a final investor. I personally find it very hard to see why that is harmful or unreasonable – it seems to me we simply have a planning application with a delay attached to it, it doesn't mean anything other than that."

He urged councillors to back the plans as vital funding for the area could otherwise be lost and local residents could end up with a worse planning application being lodged further down the line.

Coventry City Council has said that four firms are currently "exploring interest" in the site, which lies next to the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (BIC) recently visited by Business Secretary Peter Kyle. UKBIC develops other firms' battery prototypes into working products that can be manufactured at scale.

The city council's former Cabinet member for jobs, regeneration and climate change, Jim O'Boyle, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service when we interviewed him after the loss of his seat in the May elections: "I oversaw the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (BIC). We bid for that as a city and we won it, and I always knew that it was a sprat to catch a mackerel in terms of a bigger economic investment at the airport, and the airport's got lots of interest. I have every reason to believe that will come to fruition and be successful."

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But former Conservative group leader Gary Ridley said, when speaking about the Tories' local manifesto ahead of the elections, his party wanted to keep the airport open.

Last month, just before the local elections, Mr Ridley told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "We think the idea of the gigafactory is for the birds, quite frankly, we've not seen any significant interest from the private sector in doing this. We think it's wrong to close down the airport.

"We think what we should be doing is looking at sites around there within the investment zone where we could develop other new technologies. It would seem to be a great place to develop drone technology."