April 08--Time may be running out on the struggling Braden Airpark as airport authority officials and pilots appear at a standstill in their efforts to save it.
It's been six months since the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority delayed closing the small-plane airport to give pilots a chance to save it, but the two sides appear to be right where they were in September -- far apart on price and short on solutions to close the gap.
The latest plan to lease the air park to pilots for $55,000 a year fell apart when airport officials countered with an offer seeking triple that. The prospects of pilots purchasing it are no better, with pilots offering $1.5 million and the airport seeking $3.5 million.
After six months of talks an April 22 deadline looms for the airport authority to decide whether to close it.
"We're still open to a lease or purchase, but the terms are untenable to us," said Ed Lozano, a member of the pilots group trying to save the 80-acre small-plane airfield in Forks Township. "We're still pretty far apart, but I'm hoping we can all find middle ground."
The problem is the clock is about to run out. In an effort to help pay off the remainder of a $26 million court judgment against it for taking a developer's land in the 1990s, the airport authority two years ago decided to sell unnecessary assets.
Among those assets was Braden Airpark, the 76-year-old single runway airfield where local pilots can base their planes and thousands have learned to fly since 1938. Talk of its closing caused the longtime operator, Vern Moyer, to leave for a more stable situation, taking with him a flight school and maintenance staff. In addition, while 70 pilots once kept their planes there, the number is down to 30.
Still, when a group of pilots urged officials not to sell it, the authority in September decided to delay its decision until this month, to give pilots a chance to find someone to buy or lease it. Initial encouragement has turned to frustration as the two sides appear to be far apart on what they believe the airport is worth.
Pilots have formally offered $1.2 million, and last week revealed that they'd be willing to come up to $1.5 million, Lozano said. He noted that an assessment commissioned by pilots put the property's value at $1.2 million.
The authority's assessment has the value at $3.5 million, and that's what it is asking, authority Executive Director Charles Everett Jr. said. While pilots argue the authority's assessment isn't in line with the site's recreation/education zoning, Everett questions the validity of the pilots' assessment.
"It was done by one of the pilots' firms," Everett said. "I assure you our estimate is based on the proper zoning."
Everett said because the airport bases planes at Lehigh Valley International and at Queen City airports, it is no longer acceptable to lose money at Braden.
The problem, he said, is the authority is still paying $160,000 a year for a bond issuance that was used to buy Braden in 1999. Roughly $3 million is left on that non-taxable debt. While Everett acknowledges that some of that loan was used for other airport maintenance beyond buying Braden, the debt would have to be retired by a Braden sale or the airport would be liable to pay taxes on the entire debt, he said.
That puts the airport in a box that requires getting at least $3 million for Braden, Everett said.
The restrictions of that box a few months ago led to a lease proposal by pilots who offered to pay the same $55,000 a year that Moyer was paying. That brought a counter by Everett of $160,000 -- again tied to breaking even on the debt payment.
"We'll consider all options, but we can no longer afford to carry on as we did," Everett said. "We can't keep losing money on Braden."
Everett said if Braden is to remain open for the long term, it will have to have money-making airplane fueling and maintenance operations and it would have a flight school. Ideally, those operations would be profitable enough to justify a $160,000 annual lease payment, he said.
The problem, pilots say, is that Moyer did all of that for more than 16 years without approaching those kinds of revenues.
That puts both sides back to square one: the authority holding an airport it can't afford to operate or sell, and pilots coveting an airport they can't afford to buy.
"We want to save it, and I believe the authority would like to save it as well," Lozano said. "We just have to figure out a way to do it."
Everett said he plans to make a recommendation of what the authority should do with Braden at the April 22 authority meeting.
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