Construction Projects at Airport Take Flight

2010-07-02 / Business
By Daniel Wolowicz
camarillo@theacorn.com

MORE ROOM—Construction continues on two new hangars for the private jet charter firm Sun Air Jets at the Camarillo Airport. The project is one of three construction sites under way at the Camarillo Airport. RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers Despite a downturn in construction projects throughout Camarillo, work crews are busy at the Camarillo Airport with three large-scale projects that are in various stages of development.

The projects include Sun Air Jets’ $7.1-million expansion, which will add two hangars and nearly 44,000 square feet of space to the private air charter company.

In addition, the Camarillo Airport is nearly finished with a large-scale water system project that connects the airport with the city’s waterlines, according to Todd McNamee, Ventura County’s director of airports.

Rounding out the projects is the $34-million police and fire training facility built by the Ventura County Community College District, which is slated for completion by February 2011.

Big picture

McNamee said the Camarillo Airport—along with the Oxnard Airport—is owned by the county and managed in cooperation with the airport authority and the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

The seven property owners at the Camarillo Airport are collectively referred to as the Camarillo Utility Enterprise. With about 650 acres—or 64 percent—the airport authority is the largest landowner. The Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District is second, while the community college district is a close third, McNamee said.

McNamee said the airports are self-supporting and generate revenue by leasing hangars and buildings, as well as through the various fees that are charged to the private plane owners.

Once every five years the airport authority compares its rent and fee costs to other small airports within the region. McNamee said that this year airport officials determined that hangar and tie-down fees at the Camarillo and Oxnard airports “were 30 percent below the low end of the market.”

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors recently voted 3-2 to raise hangar rents and tie-down costs at the local airport by 33 percent over the next three years, despite protest from local plane owners.

“That was quite a process for us this year,” McNamee said.

Rental and lease rates for the airport’s buildings will also be raised, but not immediately, he said.

McNamee said the airport has seen “some pullback” in terms of new development, specifically noting plans for a classic car storage facility that were shelved because investors were unable to secure a loan to finance the project.

“We’re negotiating a settlement on that lease now to terminate it,” he said. “That hurt us in the sense that we would have been generating revenue from that (lease).”

He said the airport authority trimmed its staff by three employees over the past year—or 10 percent.

“It was through natural attrition. We didn’t have to lay any people off.”

In addition to various businesses, the airport is home to a continuation high school, a church, a community theater, a cafe, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s air unit and training academy, and the headquarters for the county fire department.

Oxnard Union High School District’s new Architecture, Construction and Engineering Charter High School, aka ACE, will open at the airport in the fall.

Water system overhaul

Costly water bills, poor water quality and low pressure at the airport led to a joint agreement between it and Camarillo to plumb the airport property using the city’s water system.
McNamee said the project that began in 2008 is about “75 percent” done.

Since it was built in the early 1940s, the airport had been using aging ground wells for its water.

McNamee said an overhaul of the piping system has been ongoing for the past two years. Airport officials have tried to minimize the costs of overhauling the water system by adding or fixing pipelines during various construction projects.

“Every year, whenever we’re doing projects where we have reconstruction on streets or asphalt out on the airport, we try to incorporate waterline improvement into the project as well,” he said.

Improvements are currently being made to waterlines beneath Willis Avenue, which is under renovation.

McNamee said the new water system allows for the airport to install foam and water sprinkler systems in its three main hangars. The foam better equips the system to put out fires sparked by highly flammable aircraft fuel.

Two new hangars

Sun Air Jets has begun construction on two new hangars— one at 26,000 square feet, the other 18,000 square feet—on neighboring property that was recently acquired by the private jet charter firm.

Steve Lassetter, president and COO, said it’s the third and final phase of the company’s master plan that began in 2002 with the construction of Sun Air’s executive terminal and its first hangar.

In 2005, the company, which also specializes in offering hangar space and maintenance support to private aircraft, added two more hangars to accommodate the growing number of companies in the region that use the local airport for private jet travel.

Sun Air Jets is privately owned by Edward G. Atsinger III, co-founder of media giant Salem Communications.

Lassetter said business has been gaining momentum for the past year and the company is “cautiously optimistic about the future of the economy.”

Though the company had planned to wait to build the two new hangars, Lassetter said deeply discounted construction costs meant about $1 million in savings, prompting Sun Air to move forward with the work.

“From a dollars-and-cents point of view, this was the best time to move forward on the new hangars,” he said.

The yet-to-be completed hangar space is partially leased, Lassetter said. A growing number of companies have turned from other regional airports— Burbank and Van Nuys—to the Camarillo Airport over the past few years, and he believes the space will be spoken for soon.

“That’s why we are willing to make this large financial investment in the Camarillo Airport,” he said.

The hangars are slated to be completed by mid-November.

Once finished, Sun Air Jets will have invested nearly $30 million in construction at the local airport, Lassetter said.

Training center

Construction is under way on the $34-million police and fire training center, more than a decade in the making, on a 9-acre parcel at the corner of Las Posas and Pleasant Valley roads at the southeast end of the airport.

Joint use of the training center is the result of a partnership between the county’s sheriff and fire departments and the Ventura County Community College District.

The college district is financing the facility with money from Measure S, a $356.3-million bond passed in 2002 intended to pay for upgrading facilities at the county’s three community colleges as well as the new training center.

The sheriff’s and fire departments will lease the 28,000-squarefoot facility, splitting the space for classrooms to train new recruits.

In year’s past, the sheriff’s department had partnered with Ventura College to host the police academy, but education cuts have meant the sheriff’s department must hold the academy on its own. The department leases the facility.

The county’s fire department continues to hold its academy in conjunction with Oxnard College.

Jerry Mortensen, assistant dean of public safety and criminal justice at Ventura College, said the training center designed by San Diego-based architecture firm Carrier Johnson is expected to be completed by February 2011.

But Mortensen said, “If everything goes well, the soft date would be mid-December.”

Since Mortensen was hired in 1999 to shepherd the planning and construction of the training center, he said bureaucratic red tape and environmental concerns have stalled the project for more than a decade.