Airport commission, pilots to hear results of hangar safety study 

LOVELAND – The Northern Colorado Regional Airport governing board and aircraft owners facing displacement there are circling around some possible solutions, but whether they’ll bring an agreement in for a landing at Thursday’s regular commission meeting remains up in the air.

Nearly four dozen owners of private planes stored at the airport suddenly faced eviction after the commissioners emerged from a March 2 executive session with legal representation and risk managers from Fort Collins and Loveland, the cities who jointly own the airport, and declared that four hangar buildings posed safety and liability risks and would be “decommissioned” and razed.

Since then, several of the owners have found new homes for their planes, and pilot Rick Turley, representing the tenants, told BizWest on Tuesday he was “cautiously optimistic that we will find a home for the remaining tenants who want one. I just don’t know what the airport’s going to choose to do.

“They’re making progress,” he said, “but as far as I know not a single airplane has moved as yet, although it should have been done immediately.”

After Turley proposed some alternatives at the commission’s March 16 meeting and contended that some of the structural issues he had spotted at the hangars were easily repairable, the board voted to delay the evictions for a month – until June 10 for hangars in the eight-space A and 10-space B buildings and Aug. 10 for the two 20-space C buildings – to give the board and owners time to conduct a more detailed study of the condition of the structures.

The cities hired Boise, Idaho-based Civil Innovations LLC and Centennial-based forensic engineering firm Knott Laboratory LLC to complete a more detailed structural engineering analysis, and according to a meeting agenda and packet released Tuesday, the airport’s staff will present the report’s findings to the commission on Thursday.

The aircraft owners wanted to come up with alternatives to keep their planes housed, but were frustrated that the commission would not reveal what it had heard in the executive session, details which could have produced the formation of more educated alternatives.

“If the engineering report confirms that the hangars are safe, then we get to the issue of liability,” Turley said, adding that he has been given 15 minutes to make another presentation Thursday. The two options he favors, he said, would either be “for the city to maintain ownership and make the repairs necessary and then continue to enjoy the revenue, or as tenants we’d be willing to take on ownership, do our own maintenance and obtain our own liability. If the costs are low, I would expect the cities would prefer to keep getting revenue from the hangars.

If the report “turns out the way I think and it’s safe to occupy them as they stand at a fairly minimal cost to the city,” Turley said, ”I’d tell the cities to just keep ‘em. You’ve already collected a fair amount of rent from us with little expense; just keep that revenue flowing.”

According to the packet materials for Thursday’s meeting, the assessment by Civil Innovations and Knott Laboratory was done “with an emphasis on life safety and to identify potential repairs to extend the service lives of the buildings. They recently inspected the two C hangar buildings and are preparing a report with their findings and recommendations. It is still unknown if the decommissioning of the C hangars will be extended. The cities are moving forward with the decommissioning of the A and B buildings. Tenants of those buildings who are in compliance with their lease terms will be moved to the C buildings.”

According to a map included with the packet, there currently are three vacancies in each of the two C buildings, plus a total of three tenants who are in violation of their lease terms. It shows four vacancies in the A building and five in the B building, plus one tenant in violation there.

“The cities are definitely hellbent on tearing down A and B,” Turley said, but added that he hopes the commission will “keep C hangars available to us until replacement hangars are available.” 

Turley noted that the Civil Air Patrol has reached an agreement to house its aircraft at Martin Lind’s Discovery Air hangar, and added that “some tenants negotiated leases or purchase agreements with other hangars, and other tenants are continuing to look at options. There’s about three aircraft that we don’t have homes for in the C hangars.”

Thursday’s meeting will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the airport’s administration building. Four hours earlier, about 40 tenants have scheduled a meeting at the Discovery Air building where they will hear from Brad Schuster, Seattle-based manager of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, who will discuss a similar situation that occurred in Yakima, Washington. According to Michael Fassi, spokesman for the Colorado wing of the Civil Air Patrol, “at least they gave their people some time to find a space for their airplanes.”

Thursday’s agenda includes the possibility of another executive session, which Turley said makes him nervous.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that we will find a home for the remaining tenants who want one,” he said. “I just don’t know what the airport’s going to choose to do. If they say they’re unwilling to keep the C hangars open, the crisis will occur down the road. If their terms are too onerous to accept, we’ll have the problem right now.”

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