AviationBanter - View Single Post

**Don Homuth**

On 17 Nov 2006 12:20:05 -0800, wrote:

gatt wrote:

The airport was there first. The developers chose to build around it and
hope their dumbass yuppie buyers were too clueless to consider the friggin'
towered airport in their backyard. Caveat emptor. The city and people of
Beaverton decided that the good for the many was more important than the
good for a few. That's a polite way of suggesting that if you build your
house by a river you better have flood insurance.

The option is to close the airport and relocate it further somewhere out, at
the cost of tens of millions of dollars to state and federal taxpayers.
Because a handful of developers and home buyers deliberately chose to build
their house under an airport's flight pattern.

Doesn't matter who was there first.

Oh, Shur it does!

When the airport went in, the airport developers were Aware of no
nearby conflicts with housing.

When the housing went in, the housing developers were Aware of an
airport in the vicinity, carrying with it Certain Risks, but
deliberately chose to go ahead and develop anyway, reckoning that the
risks were minor.

As they have been, over the years.

It's the way the area grew.

Doesn't change the obvious Fact of How it grew -- in the full and
certain knowledge of the Real Estate types that land closer to an
airport was cheaper, and therefore more profitable to build houses on.
It's that way in almost every metropolitan area out there.

And don't forget that land use planning in Oregon for the last thirty years
has been strictly controlled thing. I remember when the Hillsboro
airport was out in the middle of nowhere. Not anymore. It's a hazard.

It was in the middle of Nowhere, until the Real Estate Developers
moved somewhere closer to it. That was a Known Risk on their part,
and once they made that choice, they get to live with it.

Now, had they chosen instead to request a Zoning, whereby Real Estate
development would have been prohibited within a reasonable radius of
the airport, that would have been OK. But they didn't.

Choices have consequences, and once made, the consequences get to be
lived with.

If you stop and think about it, the beauty of it is that financially
it's a win-win deal. The property that the airport sits on now,
situated where it is, is primo upscale suburban real estate. Promo.

It could be, if that was its Highest and Best Use. If that is indeed
the case, then the Real Estate Developers have a simple task -- make
an offer to buy the airport and pay the costs of moving it.

D'ya figure they'll actually Do that?

It's value to investing developers is astronomical. They could option
it off and start the process of locating another location, probably
much further west along the Sunset Highway, and begin building. The
profit from the sale would pay for the property, the building of a
bigger and more modern airport, and the move to it.

All they must needs do is place a money offer on the table, and it's
open for consideration. Lowered Nose, such things have been done in
other places.

But it must be done when the airport is still fully operational, and
not only After its operations have been curtailed and its value -- and
price -- have been lowered thereby.

If this is such a great idea, then let the bidding begin!

Otherwise, the airport remains where it is.