Airport authority settles rent dispute

Barrow Service Company/GA Avionics will get an approximate $1,000 per month rent reduction for the 17,000 square foot building it leases.

The company had been paying $2,500 per month on a month-to-month basis, but owner/operator Charles Swindell told the authority due to a 60-percent drop in his company’s revenues over the past year, that amount was no longer sustainable. Swindell agreed to a one-year lease as a condition of the rent reduction.

Calling the concessions “basically a (budgetary) wash,” authority members Don Holliday and Scott Miller advocated strongly for the changes.

Other authority members agreed the recent recession and current economic conditions hit the aviation industry particularly hard, leaving the authority with the choice between losing tenants and watching airport businesses die, or making the rent concessions.

Chairman Frank Nocera was the lone voice advocating maintaining higher rents.

“The county has invested a lot in this airport; it’s our job to get a fair return for the taxpayers,” he said. “We’re in a downward spiral here (referring to the proposed changes, as well as an August authority decision to reduce rent for the ailing Spitfire Deli, a terminal tenant since 2004.) If we keep up like this, we’re going to end up letting people stay for free.”

For more on this story, see the October 20 edition of the Barrow Journal or click here to read the full story online when you subscribe to our new e-edition.