A group of Ogden, Utah, private aircraft owners is taking the city to court over what it claims is an attempt to take over their hangars without paying for them. According to the Standard-Examiner, the Ogden Regional Airport Association claims a city policy change last April over lease agreements at the airport will allow the city to exercise what are known as “reversionary rights.” That means that when leases for airport property expire and are not renewed, the city assumes title to the assets that remain on the leased property. Some of the leased lots are home to hangars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Owners can, of course, remove the hangars but the suit claims it’s “very unlikely that tenants will voluntarily incur the cost of removing existing hangars at the end of term.”
The suit also suggests the city led hangar owners on, and “intentionally instilled a reliance that … leases would consistently be renewed to encourage hangar owners to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into their hangars so that the city could obtain ownership of the improved hangars for facility leases prior to the hangar owners seeing any significant return or realizing the full benefit of the leasehold improvements.” The suit also invokes the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which says “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
When the new ordinance was adopted last April, city lawyer Gary Williams told the city council that the measure was a shot across the bow warning the private hangar owners the city has plans for that part of the field. The city is hoping to draw aerospace companies to the area as part of a redevelopment plan. Mayor Mike Caldwell told the newspaper the city is on firm legal ground but declined further comment. Ironically, the new ordinance offers much longer terms to the future occupants of the redeveloped areas. It allows the airport manager to offer leases of up to 40 years. The current lease term for land occupied by private hangars is 15 years.
