Michael Kopp wanted to sell Auburn Flight Service.
Sparrow Tang hoped to buy Kopp’s building at Auburn Municipal Airport and move his business there.
For the sake of financing his purchase, however, Tang needed a longer lease option than the 30-year option specified in the 40-year lease the original owner signed with former Auburn Mayor Stan Kersey in February of 1978.
Extending the lease option was in the power of the City of Auburn to do — indeed, it owns the land under the building, and the lease says it must first grant the owner permission to sell — so on May 4 the Auburn City Council made it a 50-year-lease option. The half-century clock begins to tick in May of 2018.
The upshot is that sometime after August, when the sale is complete, Tang, owner of Cascade Helicopter Services at Boeing Field in Seattle, will start to call Auburn’s airport home.
According to its website, Cascade Helicopter Services (CHS) is “a comprehensive helicopter maintenance and repair facility, established in 1975 at Boeing Field in Seattle.” Specifically, it is an authorized repair station and authorized service center for MD helicopters and high-end turbine equipment.
Councilmembers got their first look at the lease extension proposal during a study session May 4 at Auburn City Hall.
Today Auburn ranks among the busiest municipal airports in the state, and about 50 percent of the activity involves helicopters, said City Finance Director Shelley Coleman
“That’s what’s driving this,” Coleman said.
Given all the high end helicopters that will need repairs, Mayor Nancy Backus noted the potential for sales tax revenues.
“We’re not talking about the price of a new car; we’re talking about the price of a car lot,” Backus said. “… It’s millions.”
“The new business will also require aviation fuel,” Coleman said, adding that at some point CHS may actually provide that service for fixed-wing aircraft.
The airport is fully funded by airport leases and land leases, and by federal grants for whatever capital work is needed.
According to recent news reports, with the recent increase in activity at Boeing Field, King County is making it a more expensive place to do business, and as the county finds itself in a position to be more selective, it is no longer renewing long-term leases, preferring instead month-to-month leases.
Councilman Rich Wagner said he is all in favor of a helicopter service business at the airport, but he objects to any helicopter training that might happen at the site in the future. Cascade is not certified today to provide helicopter training.
“All these things about sales, that’s great, and a complete airport is great. But helicopters that use up the runway space more than they should, in training, to me is a big detriment,” Wagner said.
Wagner cited a recent report on congestion at Sea-Tac Airport, describing its total lack of capacity over the next 25 to 30 years, to argue for at least some limitations on the number of helicopters training flights possible in Auburn.
“They’re looking everywhere to put other airplanes down on the ground. They won’t put big ones down here, but I think, eventually, our airport will service some kind of business jets,” Wagner said. “And the more we allow our airport space to be used by non-paying, helicopter-training planes, the more we diminish our chances to capitalize on that economic opportunity.”
There is a helicopter pad on the airport’s west side, built there to allow helicopter pilots — most of them part of Green River College’s aviation training program — to touch and go there instead of on the runway. Two airport tenants have helicopters, too.
Wayne Osborne, a retired air traffic controller, said that if there is to be a control tower at the airport — in fact, the airport has qualified for one for years — the physical presence of a controller, or controllers, would eliminate conflicts.
“I can see by 2068 — when the 50-year lease option expires — there would probably be a control tower at the airport,” Osborne said.
