The leaders of Ocean City, Md., will square off face-to-face with FAA officials who want them to sell the local golf course or pay the agency $13.3 million. As AVweb told you last spring , the FAA provided funding to buy the land, on which the golf course was later developed, for future airport expansion. In Ocean City’s latest long-term planning document for the airport, no expansion is envisioned and the FAA wants the course (several holes of which are a wedge shot from the nearest runway) removed from any entanglement with airport funds. The issue now comes down to money, and a meeting between the city and FAA is tentatively scheduled for later this month. Ocean City says $13.3 million is far too much to pay for the golf-course land. It commissioned two appraisals, one of which pegged the value at $167,000. Well, at least that leaves plenty of room for negotiation. Ultimately, Ocean City would like to keep both the airport and the golf course without knocking an eight-figure hole in the treasury. “I’m still optimistic we can come to an agreement,” Guy Ayres, the city’s lawyer, told Ocean City Today.
