LAWA Appraisal Doubles Rents For Aviators at Van Nuys Airport By JACQUELINE FOX Staff Reporter Officials overseeing operations at Van Nuys Airport have submitted a new land appraisal for the entire facility that calls for doubling aviators’ rents and making the increases retroactive to 2000. Representatives for airport tenants say the appraisal does not reflect accurate market values for aviation land at the facility and intend to file a counter appraisal May 16 to back it up. The Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) wants to raise land rents from $15,000 to $30,000 per acre per year. The latest appraisal, completed in early 2002 but only recently submitted to airport tenants, is the first one done by LAWA for Van Nuys since 1990, although the city charter requires the agency to submit one every five years. Appraisal negotiations between the two sides broke down in 1995 when LAWA rejected tenants’ claims they were being overcharged because rent values had depreciated during the recession of the 1990s and following the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Tenants submitted their own appraisal supporting those claims eight years ago, but it was rejected by LAWA. Under charter guidelines, the agency should have engaged an outside party to submit a third appraisal in an effort to end the stalemate, but representatives of the Van Nuys Airport Association (VNAA), say that was never done. LAWA officials were unavailable for comment on this issue. VNAA officials are also criticizing LAWA for failing to submit an appraisal five years later and assert that if increases are now going to be made retroactive, that LAWA go back to 1995 and complete the original appraisal process based on that year’s market conditions. LAWA officials have again denied that request, according to VNAA spokeswoman Evelyn Jerome. “We think LAWA has conveniently chosen to do an appraisal based on 2000 market rates because it was a period when there was an upswing in the economy,” she said. Rick Janisse, LAWA’s deputy executive director for business development did not return several calls for comment. Stacy Geere, a LAWA spokeswoman based at Van Nuys, said only that “the 1995 appraisal was still on the table,” and that LAWA officials “were confident that a resolution on the current appraisal would be reached.” Geere said she could not give an explanation for the missed five-year deadline in 2000. According to Jerome, LAWA agreed in 1996 to lower rents at Ontario Airport after assessments showed land values there had decreased by 40 percent between 1990 and 1995. Tenants at that facility now pay the same $15,000 per acre as tenants at Van Nuys, even though Ontario is a commercial airport, and the other serves the general aviation industry. “The fact that LAWA officially recognized that property values for Ontario had decreased but refused to do so in Van Nuys, is just unfair,” said Jerome. “We are going to have another appraisal done and all of these issues will be addressed, including the fact that LAWA is forcing its tenants to suffer because they failed to complete their job,” said Jerome.
