Airport Lands on 85 Years of Deeds, Easements, Airspace Rights

TRAVERSE CITY — When you research history, says Airport Director Kevin Klein, you cannot predict what you’ll find.

The curious look for old documents for just that reason. Administrators like Klein may be curious too, but they examine airport history because the Federal Aviation Administration requires it.

“I’ve heard there’s a metal box of historical documents buried somewhere here, maybe near runway 10,” Klein said, during an interview in his office earlier this month. “When we re-graded that area we told the contractors about it, and put them on notice.”

That was in 2017, and no treasure chest of Cherry Capital history was found.

What turned up instead, as part of a four-year research project, is an 85-year jumble of land splits, utility and drainage easements, defunct subdivision plans, old plat maps, road right-of-ways and airspace — aka “avigation” — rights.

Cherry Capital received an FAA grant in September 2016 to update a document the FAA calls “Exhibit A” — the status of all airport land acquired with federal funds.

Klein has been working with engineers at Prein & Newhof ever since, to research the ownership of 60-plus abutting land parcels, 70 to 80 avigation rights and two dozen or more under- and aboveground easements.

“One of my guys has a single spaced notebook with, I think, 30 pages of notes just trying to walk through the ownership history and better understand how we got here,” said Bob Nelesen, of Prein & Newhof. “We’re going all the way back to the inception of the airport.”

The airport was built by the City of Traverse City in 1935, turned over to the U.S. Navy and the Department of Defense in 1941, given back to the city after World War II, and has been jointly owned by Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties since 1971.

The facility is governed by the Northwest Region Airport Commission, and the Exhibit A undertaking comes at a time when stakeholders are grappling with whether or not the facility should transition to an authority.

A subcommittee studying the issue for nearly a year has recommended it, though some elected officials, and members of the public, say not so fast.

“The reason we are given for making this change is that it takes too long for the airport to make any changes,” private pilot Randy McClure said, during a December informational session. “I would prefer to see a better way for the three organizations to work together instead of creating an independent, un-elected board.”

James Downer, of Traverse City, said he’s concerned about members of an authority growing hostile to general aviation — recreational pilots and owners of small planes — as air carriers gain increased prominence.

“It’s with some trepidation I watch this process here in Traverse City,” Downer said.

Public comments, a few of which favored the authority model, were recorded in December by a stenographer, and released in a Board of Commissioners meeting packet Friday.

The research involved in updating Exhibit A, which will cost between $400,000 and $425,000 in engineering time, title searches, surveying and legal fees, is required regardless of what is decided about airport oversight, Klein said.

Ninety percent of that is from the FAA; 5 percent from the State of Michigan and 5 percent from the airport, Klein said.

“When we looked at where we were, at what major projects had taken place over the years with runway extensions, the acquisition of some of the property for the south approach, the FAA is going to say we’ve got to make sure this is all updated.”

FAA regulations also call for reimbursement to the federal government, at market value, for any land bought with grant money and later sold, whether to a municipality or a private landowner.

Klein said he was not yet aware of any funds the airport commission, Grand Traverse or Leelanau counties would be liable for.

When Exhibit A is complete, however, some discrepancies may yet come to light.

“I can’t go any further than that,” he said, when asked to name specific parcels of land — and their owners — which may have been bought with FAA grant funds and later sold without reimbursing the FAA.

“I have to turn to our attorney for that. There might be some historical properties that have come up to light for some issues that have been identified through the process. But we have to work with those parties and make them aware of it and we have not done that yet.”

The airport’s attorney is Karrie Zeits, of Sondee, Racine & Doren of Traverse City, who said the concern is that the revenue comes back to the airport, to be used for airport purposes.

“As long as that happens, I think the FAA is okay, and is not necessarily expecting that it be paid back as long as they’ve approved the whole transaction,” Zeits said. “So there’s some transactions and some processes that haven’t necessarily been approved by the FAA, and some transactions and processes that we may not have received fair market value for that we need to follow up on.”

Klein said he and Zeits and Nelesen would know in the next six to eight months if any abutting landowners, easement or rights holders, or municipalities like Traverse City are affected.

“Are there easements that are affected? Yes,” said Nelesen. “Some we ended up getting a simple head nod from the FAA. The road access to TCAPS for the soccer fields, for example. As in, ‘You didn’t have that on this piece of paper before, now you do, it’s not that big of a deal, check.”

Other title paperwork may be more complicated, but Klein won’t know until the Exhibit A research is complete, sometime later this year, he said.

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