Regional Airport Landowners Meeting First Step For Potential Land Acquisition

Just over a dozen people attended a public meeting over potential land acquisition for a proposed regional airport to be built between Pella and Oskaloosa.

Just over a dozen people attended a public meeting over potential land acquisition for a proposed regional airport to be built between Pella and Oskaloosa.

Pella, Iowa – Representatives of HDR, the South Central Regional Airport Agency’s project engineers, held a public meeting on Thursday at the Pella Public Safety Complex.

Affected property owners of the proposed new regional airport listened to some of the first steps that would take place as the SCRAA board prepares to have the land appraised, potentially some time in 2019.

Jerry Searle, Airport Planner with HDR said projects like the proposed regional airport take many years to develop, “and at this point and time, we’ve been given authorization only to do the public information meeting, which is the meeting we’re having today. The other is to begin preparing survey plats for disposal of nonaeronautical property at the existing Oskaloosa airport.”

“Other than that, we’ve been given no green light, nor has the board been given a green light, by FAA to begin the process of actual acquisition in respect to specific parcels of ground.”

Steven Sykes, Acquisition Specialist at HDR, then outlined that his role with HDR is land acquisition. “The slides that we’ll go through are pulled not verbatim, but very close to what’s enclosed in this packet.”

The packet provided what the FAA outlines as “information to persons who own or rent real property that is to be acquired for airport development.”

Concerns from those in attendance revolved around the dispute between Mahaska County and the cities of Pella and Oskaloosa, and, in particular, 220th Avenue in rural Mahaska County.

Searle explained that an access road for farm equipment is part of the airport mitigation plan.

Also discussed was the funding of land acquisition and how each respective city would pay their share. Pella city council will determine how they fund their portion, while the city of Oskaloosa is planning on selling nonaeronautical portions of ground at their current airport to finance their portion.

A timeline was also discussed between Searle and the attendees. Searle says that the land acquisition process, once it begins, could take upwards of three years.

John DeRooi, a landowner who owns property within the proposed airport site, also questioned the layout of the airport, and how the acquisition could impact parcels of land, saying those impacted parcels would lose their value.

Posted by on Apr 6 2018. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed

         

Search Archive

Search by Date
Search by Category
Search with Google
Log in | Copyright by Oskaloosa News