Debate over airport hangars — including rental rates, tenant priorities and the role of county oversight — dominated Tuesday’s meeting of Allen County commissioners.
Much of the discussion focused on the status of the airport’s two newest hangars and how their rent should be structured.
Last week, commissioners raised the rent on the new hangars to $600 a month.
However, local airplane mechanic Scott Tholen, who owns Home Safe Aviation LLC and who rents one of the new hangars, is being allowed to pay $375 a month along with utilities.
That fact rubs Vince Hill, a Kansas City pilot who rents five hangars at the airport, the wrong way. Hill, also a mechanic, owns Black Horse Aviation, a Kansas City-based aircraft refinishing and polishing business that operates at the airport.
When asked if he could receive the discounted rate for one of the new hangars, Hill was told no.
That’s because according to Commission Chair David Lee, Hill’s business does not qualify as a business. Lee said that because Hill does not currently have someone working at the hangar five days a week, he does not consider it a business operation.
Lee said his understanding was that Tholen moved into the new hangar because he needed additional space, but that his previous rental arrangement would continue.
“In my mind, Scott would transition over to the new building, continue paying the $375 rent, with utilities, and then the other new and then the other new building would become the $600 a month building,” Lee said.
COMMISSIONER John Brocker justified the higher prices saying that the new hangars should not be rented at the same price as older buildings.
Airport manager Robert Poydack, who previously had the responsibility of determining the rental rates and was against the higher $600 rate, argued that hangars are long-term investments that will continue generating revenue for decades.
“We have a hangar out there that was built in 1980-something,” Poydack said. “It’s 40 years old. It’s still making money for the county and for the airport.”
He added that any new hangar will also pay for itself over time.
“That $160,000 that you invested this time on this hangar is going to be paying you back,” he said. “Could be 100 years you’re getting paid back on that money.”
PART OF the discussion also focused on how the county determines what qualifies as a “business” tenant at the airport, a distinction that affects rental pricing. Commissioners allow Tholen to pay a lower monthly rate because his work benefits other pilots at the airport, though they refused to extend that same courtesy to Hill.
Lee said the commission still needs to determine how a business tenant should be defined. He suggested that, in his view, a business tenant would likely be someone operating regularly at the airport with customers coming in for services on a regular basis.
