Airport development readies for takeoff

The city council discussed and provided direction to city staff Tuesday on a plan to develop additional hangars at the Boulder City Municipal Airport as well as development of a larger area for multiple uses including additional hangars.

The hangars have been a source of controversy since late 2023 when, ignoring the advice of then-City Manager Taylour Tedder that the city exercise its contractual right to take possession of the existing hangars, which sat on land whose lease period was coming to an end (a process known as reversion) and then re-lease them at substantially higher building lease rates, and instead extended the cheap land leases at an even lower rate up to the lease period limit imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

They have also come up in relation to other development proposals including when the council nixed a plan for a luxury RV park that would have included convention and meeting space with one councilmember saying he would prefer to see the land used to develop additional hangars.

This week’s discussion gave city staff the go-ahead to issue requests for proposal to develop two areas east of the current taxiways.

The first, a small plot of about 2.6 acres is on the southeast corner of the airport, south of the existing hangars. This land is proposed to be used only for additional hangar space.

The second plot, known as the Northwest Land Development, sits on about 40 acres located east of Taxiway Bravo. It is envisioned as including multi-use buildings and outdoor space dedicated to covered tie-down spots (i.e., shade hangars), parking for aircraft and vehicles, an overflow parking area or garage, a restaurant, a large meeting/conference space and space for airport administrative offices, as well as additional hangars.

The meeting space was of special interest to one member of the council —Mayor Joe Hardy —who has long been vocal about his desire for a large and adequately air-conditioned space where the city can host events. The only place currently available in town is Boulder Creek Golf Course.

“The meeting space will be big enough for at least 250 people? With amenities?” he asked.

The amenities the mayor referred to are restrooms, which the current Boulder Creek structure does not have.

Airport Manage Marissa Adou assured the mayor that the proposal requests could include language stating that the meeting space could host at least 250 people and include “amenities.”

On Sept. 11, 2024, the city council authorized the appraisals for the two areas of land. The actual appraisals were submitted in November of last year. Before the sale or lease of any city land, the city is required to obtain an appraisal. Nevada law requires that the city obtain two appraisals and then use the average of the two appraisals as the minimum acceptable lease rate. The city may sell or lease the land at a price higher than the appraised value, but not less.

Under those appraisals, the smaller plot is expected to bring in a little more than $100,000 annually with the larger plot bringing in up to $930,000 each year. Note that none of this money would go into the city’s general fund. The airport runs under one of several enterprise funds in the city budget. This means that revenue generated by the airport goes into that fund, which can only be spent on the airport.

Discussion mostly centered on how proposals would be evaluated. As explained by City Attorney Brittany Walker, the process usually means that proposals come in and a committee made up of city staff rates each proposal on a standard set of criteria and then the ratings are tallied and averaged and an overall rating for each is taken to the council for their deliberations on approving, or not, one of the proposals.

The makeup of the committee ended up consuming most of the discussion with multiple council members expressing a desire that an “airplane person” be included on the committee. The consensus was that “consumers” of airport services are a specialized group and that a voice representing that group should be among the members of the committee. That is less easy than it might appear due to the fact that the actual proposals may contain proprietary information about things including the financial condition of the company making the proposal. As a result, the actual proposals are not public so whoever served as the “airplane person” on the committee would have to agree to keep all of the proposal details secret. Acting City Manager Micheal Mays said that staff could approach the airport working group and see if they could come up with a representative to sit on the committee.

The next step will be for the city to begin advertising the request for proposals, a process which should take about six weeks. Councilman Steve Walton expressed an openness to extending that period in order to allow local companies that might have the ability to develop hangars but not the experience with RFPs to navigate the process. However, Mays said that extending the period to anything more than two months could endanger the timeline, which has a hard stop. Once an appraisal is done, it is good for one year. In other words, the city has until November to get the projects under contract or they would have to start the process over with new appraisals.