Palmdale’s Plans to Buy Site 9 Unexpectedly Crash

City of Palmdale officials are scheduled to meet this month with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to find out what went wrong with Palmdale’s plans to buy property from a city of Los Angeles agency. Los Angeles World Airports notified the city in early October that the 300-acre Site 9 parcel in Palmdale was no longer for sale but would be available on a lease basis. Palmdale wants to gain control of the property in hopes of jumpstarting redevelopment of the area and to boost city coffers. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center operates out of one hangar at the site, with a second hangar remaining empty. The city and LAWA were in talks about the sale of the property, with both sides making offers and counter-offers, so the reversal by LAWA came as a shock, said Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford. “Our goal is to fill property that has been neglected and to get LAWA out of that site,” Ledford said. “They have not been a good landlord.” The airport agency, however, had been clear with Palmdale officials that any sale needed approval by the Board of Airport Commissioners, said LAWA spokesperson Diana Sanchez. In the months since the two sides entered talks, the makeup of the airport commission and the real estate market changed. “The (airport commission) views LAWA property differently and is willing to look at a long-term lease but not the sale of the land,” Sanchez said. The hangars were built for assembling the B-1 bomber and were later used for aircraft repairs. A number of movies, including “The Terminal” and sequels to “Pirates of the Caribbean,” have filmed at Site 9. Before moving into its hangar in 2007, NASA spent $6.5 million in modifications and upgrades. LAWA paid $4 million for roof repairs to the building and to install a new central utility plant. Confident in working out a purchase of the property, the city was going to use the NASA lease to fund a bond to pay for the land. Palmdale has long coveted the Site 9 property, particularly since NASA moved in with its science mission aircraft. With such a high- profile tenant, the city hopes NASA will attract complementary businesses. “I am hoping a tenant emerges that says we are moving into the site and will bring jobs,” Ledford said. At this time, LAWA has no interested tenants for the property, Sanchez said. In May, the Palmdale City Council upped the attraction of Site 9 to potential tenants by adding it to the city’s redevelopment area. That action also added the adjacent Plant 42 owned by the U.S. Air Force that is home to prime aerospace and defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Corp. The meeting with Villaraigosa shows Palmdale has not given up on acquiring Site 9. The city, Ledford said, is best able to maintain the relations with the defense contractors and not jeopardize the jobs those companies bring. “An insensitive partner can do more harm than good,” Ledford said.