City Awaits Eclipse Outcome

Feb. 26, 2009

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With Eclipse Aviation apparently shutting down, the city of Albuquerque is waiting for answers about what comes next.

City leaders said millions are at stake, but until the bankruptcy court makes its ruling, everything they talk about is speculation.

There are a few buildings near the airport that have Eclipse aviation written all over them.

Officials with the city's Aviation Department said they're not Eclipse specific, even though they said Eclipse sunk millions into facility improvements.

"Those facilities were not purposely built for Eclipse," Dan Jiron, with the Aviation Department, said. "They were built with any aviation industry able to move in there."

Now, with Eclipse on the verge of moving out, the city could be losing out on a deal they've worked on for years.

Besides the brick and mortar, the city put in money for other projects that ultimately benefited the plane maker.

"The city was part of water line development, but we look at that as infrastructure development that helps the populous as a whole," Peter Mitchell, with the city's Economic Development department, said.

Mitchell said anything the city invested in was just that: economic development, and good for the city.

He said any price tag on those projects is well worth it, if Eclipse moves out and the city needs to find a new tenant.

As for when or if that will happen, that's up to a judge.

"We really just have to wait and see, we don't want to speculate, we want to wait and see what becomes of that," Jiron said.

The city's Aviation Department said Eclipse has been a model tenant for the past several years.

It said with the exception of the two months after the initial Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, Eclipse always paid its rent on time.

But whether any check will be coming to the city March 1, that remains to be seen.

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