Jackson wants ML port to consider buying municipal airport

MOSES LAKE — Port of Moses Lake Commissioner Darrin Jackson believes the port should consider buying the Moses Lake Municipal Airport.

“The city doesn’t know how to run an airport,” Jackson said. “The airport has been stagnant for 20 years.”

Jackson first mooted the suggestion at the end of a Port of Moses Lake commission meeting on Monday, noting it would be simpler for the port to have control over the municipal airport to allow it to write leases for tenants that would help promote construction and development.

Speaking Tuesday morning in one of the hangars at the municipal airport owned by his business, Jackson Flight Center, Jackson said the current lease structure does not promote development. The city owns the land and leases it out to tenants, who must then build their own facilities. Because a lease on land can be terminated at just about any time, Jackson said no one can receive financing for hangars or other improvements that would help new businesses set up shop or current businesses expand.

“No bank is going to loan money on that situation,” he said. “They’re not going to loan money on what turns out to be a 90-day lease.”

The Moses Lake City Council voted last year to convert the airport advisory committee into a proper airport commission, and is currently studying the best way of rewriting current leases to give businesses more stability and improve the airport’s financial situation. However, under that, tenants like Jackson would see a significant increase in their monthly lease payments to the city.

“A 150% increase when I already have a signed lease? That’s not going to happen,” he said.

In an email to the Columbia Basin Herald, Moses Lake City Manager Allison Williams wrote the city is still trying to work out the best operating model for the municipal airport, but has not talked with the port about a possible sale.

“We have not had a formal conversation about selling the airport,” she wrote.

Jackson said it makes sense for the Port of Moses Lake, which operates the Grant County International Airport, to control the municipal airport and its airspace as well. For example, he said this year the airspace over the municipal airport will also be closed during the Moses Lake Airshow to ensure safety for the Navy’s E/A-18G Growler flight team to perform and a brace of U.S. Marine Corps F-35 Lightning II fighter jets to do a flyover.

“We have a lot more air traffic now than we did 10 years ago,” he said.

Jackson said he has no idea what the city would be willing to sell the airport for, or if the Port of Moses Lake even has the resources to buy it. The port is currently in the midst of a major project to expand the Columbia Basin Railroad along Wheeler Road out to the port’s industrial areas as well as filling out the port’s west-side industrial park and construction of new hangar space.

“Monetarily, I have no idea what the city is going to want for the airport,” he said. “I have no idea what the port commissioners are willing to pay.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com