Chairman shuns potential rent agreement

“I called and called,” Maxwell said. “He just kept giving me the runaround…which doesn’t make any sense because the package we were willing to offer was worth $140,000 more over the five-year period (of Romanairs’ recently renegotiated lease) than what the authority agreed to and that’s just base rent. That doesn’t factor in all the growth we are confident we could bring to the airport.”

In the proposal Optum Aviation Services submitted to Nocera on July 30, at Nocera’s request, the company offered $3,500 per month rent for the 16,000 square-foot building and 7-acres of land Romanair leases; the lease approved by the authority on October 19 requires Romainair to pay $1,500 per month.

Optum Aviation Services proposed renting the airport fuel farm for $6,000 per year; Romanair pays $2,000 per year. Optum also offered to pay $8 per square foot to lease the first floor of the main terminal and spend a minimum of $25,000 on capital improvements on the building. Romanair does the pay the authority 10-cents per gallon on fuel sales and 25 percent of tie-down rents. Neither of those fees was in the Optum proposal.

“We think the Winder airport has great potential,” Maxwell said. “It just needs some help, some improvements and a lot more marketing.”

Maxwell pointed to Optum Aviation Services success at the Kennesaw airport, where in the past six years “we’ve done $1.5 million worth of development, marketing and putting in infrastructure… This is what we came to Mr. Nocera with and the more we tried to work with him, the more distant he got…It’s just sad.”

Maxwell appeared at the October 19 authority meeting after he was told by airport manager Wanda Mitchell on Oct. 18 it was too late for him to be placed on the agenda. Maxwell said he was “amazed and frustrated” that Nocera and vice-chairman Scott Miller, who attended Maxwell’s second June meeting with Nocera, “sat there and didn’t even mention there was another, more profitable proposal just waiting to be placed on the table” while the authority discussed and ultimately approved Romanair’s lease. After that meeting Maxwell demanded to be heard, and was told he could appear on the November agenda.

”What’s the point?” he said. “They’ve already signed a five-year agreement with Romanair.”

Maxwell said his next step is to write a letter to the Barrow County Board of Commissioners detailing what had occurred and what his company offered.

“It just seems like the citizens of this county and the commissioners should know what’s been going on,” he said. “It’s just a shame we never even got a chance to show the authority what we could do to grow and increase profitability at their airport.”

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

When asked why Optum Aviation Services is interested in investing in an airport has dropped rents for three tenants during the past few months due to reduced traffic and business at the airport, Maxwell said “it’s all about how you run your operations.”

He said he and business partner Scott Beale flew a helicopter into the Barrow airport “one Saturday early in the summer,” to “check things out.”

He said he was “flabbergasted…The terminal door was locked at 10:30 in the morning; there was no one to greet us; the deli wasn’t open; we couldn’t even find anyone to sell us some fuel.”

Maxwell said they stayed “at the airport for an hour and half. During that time they watched three planes land. The pilots got out, tried to get in the locked terminal, looked around for someone to buy fuel from then “just flew away.”

“Saturday’s supposed to be the busiest day at an airport and here this terminal is all locked up and there’s nobody around…that’s no way to run an airport if you expect people to come back.”

Chairman Nocera and vice-chairman Miller did not return the reporter’s calls.

Romanair and Optum Aviation Services are both fixed base operators (FBOs) offering services which include: hangar space, tie-down rental, mechanical service and fuel sales. Romainair has been the primary FBO at the Barrow County airport since 1985.

Optum Aviation Services is cooperative venture between Optum, a general contractor, construction management firm and New Flight, an aviation company specializing in FBO startups and management.