yem wrote:
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Peninsulair loses dogfight
TheSpec.com - News - Peninsulair loses dogfight
Flying school locked out of hangar at Hamilton airport
By Steve Arnold, The Hamilton Spectator
Hamilton’s only flying school has been shot down in flames.
Peninsulair, which has been teaching commercial and weekend pilots to fly since 1946, was locked out of its hangar at Hamilton airport on the weekend after a 10-month dispute over its lease.
The action grounds the hopes of up to 100 student pilots who were studying with the school.
“We’ve been negotiating with them since the beginning of the year and we finally reached a point where neither side was in a position to continue,” said Hamilton airport spokesperson Steve Howse. “We’re very disappointed. It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t come to an agreement with them but in the end we had to act in the best interests of managing the assets.
“We think we did everything we could to keep them and it’s unfortunate that it had to end this way,” he added.
Peninsulair, operated by brothers Rick and Marty White who took it over from their father Glenn, got its start in 1946 when Hamilton airport was still located in the east end of the city. When that field was closed to make way for post-war housing, Glenn White moved his school to the former RCAF station at Mount Hope, where he also served as part-time airport manager.
The company operated from a hangar it bought from the federal government in 1975 when the building was declared surplus. While Peninsulair owns the hangar, the airport owns the ground its sits on. Hamilton airport is owned by the city, but operated by TradePort International Corp. under a 40-year lease.
In a July interview Rick White said since TradePort took over the operation of the airport, small businesses have been steadily forced out by rocket-powered rent increases -- 250 per cent in the first three months after TradePort took over, 48 per cent five years later and more than 50 per cent in April.
For Peninsulair, those numbers mean rent has gone from $443 a month in 1988 to more than $4,400 a month this year. Rent for similar space at the airports in Brantford, London, St. Catharines and Kitchener ranges between $800 and $1,000 a month.
The company had been operating under a long-term lease it signed with the city in 1988. That agreement expired March 31 and when Peninsulair asked for a 20-year renewal TradePort refused on the grounds it needs the space for expansion. It offered a renewal of only five years, with the right to end the deal on six months' notice.
Negotiations started in January and continued throughout the year with TradePort offering a long-term lease on another airport site, a short term lease on the current location or TradePort would approve a new owner for the business with a realistic business plan.
In an e-mail, Rick White accused TradePort of scuttling his efforts to sell the business. White did not respond to requests for clarification and Howse flatly rejected the allegation.
“We haven’t done anything to jeopardize any deals,” he said. “We have not been formally contacted by anyone interested in negotiating a lease for that site.”
Howse said Peninsulair’s options now are to remove its hangar to another property, sell the business or sell the hangar to TradePort at “fair market value.” That value, he added, will have to reflect TradePort’s assessment that the hangar needs more than $100,000 in improvements before it can be leased out again.
“We couldn’t turn that space around and rent it right again. It’s going to need a fair amount of investment,” he said. “No one is waiting in line to take over this space, but we need it for future airport development.”
sarnold@thespec.com
905-526-3496 |
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great day for my first x-country too
