Hangar owners: new lease won’t fly

Supervisors to decide dispute over storage units at Camarillo Airport



NO-RENT ZONE—Hangar owners at Camarillo Airport are fuming over lease-agreement terms that prohibit them from subleasing their storage units. They fear the agreement would allow the county ‘s airport authority to “confiscate” the hangars if the terms are violated.

NO-RENT ZONE—Hangar owners at Camarillo Airport are fuming over lease-agreement terms that prohibit them from subleasing their storage units. They fear the agreement would allow the county ‘s airport authority to “confiscate” the hangars if the terms are violated.

A dispute between owners of about 230 hangars at Camarillo Airport and the county’s airport authority could land before the Board of Supervisors next month, the county’s airports director said.

Airports director Todd Mc- Namee said the supervisors will get the final say in the long simmering dispute, which Mc- Namee said centers on language contained in the county’s lease of airport land to the hangar owners that prohibits them from subleasing their storage units.

Several of the owners rent out their hangars, sometimes to other aircraft owners, which is a violation of the lease terms, McNamee said.

“The lease prohibits any commercial operation at the airport,” he told the Camarillo Acorn last week. “Subleasing the hangars is considered a commercial enterprise.”

David Timms, president of Camarillo Airport Hangar Owners Association, said the county’s subleasing objections are merely a gambit to gain possession of the hangars.

“That’s what he’s trying to make it seem like it’s about,” Timms said of the subleasing prohibition. “The new lease agreement gives him every opportunity to confiscate the hangars on grounds that the owners have broken the lease terms.”

Hangar space is at a premium at Camarillo Airport, where many of the 230 privately owned small hangars have vacant space that could be rented to the more than 140 aircraft owners who are on a five-year waiting list for hangar space, according to Timms.

But the current lease agreement requires that “a private hangar be occupied by an aircraft registered to the lessee,” he said. County airport managers have turned down repeated requests from the association to amend the lease agreement to allow owners to sublease vacant hangar space, Timms said.

Hangar owners contend that a proposed lease agreement that had been set to be voted on by the county Airport Advisory Commission in July is a much longer document than the previous one approved by supervisors in 2000. The new agreement, they say, contains new and “onerous” provisions intended to cause owners to inadvertently break their leases. Once they do, airport officials can take possession of their storage units, the hangar owners contend.

Owners object to the very title of the new lease agreement, officially known as the “Privately Owned Aircraft Storage Hangar Lease Agreement.”

The owners say the title should be changed to “Privately Owned Aircraft Storage Hangar Ground Lease Agreement,” since the airport owns only the land on which the hangars sit, not the storage units themselves, according to a letter to the advisory commission from the owners association’s attorney, Richard Miller of Van Nuys.

Miller declined to comment on the dispute, saying he never speaks to the media about pending cases he’s involved in. But his office provided a copy of the letter the attorney sent June 30 to the county Aviation Advisory Commission on behalf of the Camarillo Airport Hangar Owners Association.

Among their objections: The hangar owners said new lease language stating that “the precise location of the hangar is subject to the county’s discretion and modification” could force them to incur substantial financial costs. The units were built in place and can’t be moved without being taken apart, the owners said.

In response, they requested that new language be added to the lease specifying that, should the county decide to relocate a hangar, it would pay for the costs.

McNamee responded that paying to move a hangar “if the move does not result in a public good” such as the construction of a new runway, would result in “an unlawful gift of public funds,” according to Miller’s letter.

“Language must be added that clarifies that the county will not attempt to move or relocate privately owned hangars unless the reason rises to a sufficient level of ‘public good’ that they can and will pay for all expenses related to the relocation,” Miller wrote in response.

Commission members had been set to vote on the new lease agreement at their July 17 meeting, but McNamee requested that the item be pulled from the agenda.

The proposed lease agreement will get at least one public hearing with the advisory commission before that panel votes, McNamee said

Before the public hearings, McNamee said, he plans to meet throughout the month of August with members of the hangar owners association and other stakeholders to hear more about their concerns.

“With any luck, we’ll open the formal public hearing process before the advisory commission sometime in September,” he said. “It will then likely go before the (county) Board of Supervisors in late September or early October.”