chapter hangar

Does your Chapter own a hangar? If so how did you acquire it? I am curious about this because our Chapter is currently operating out of a hangar that one of our members rents from the city that operates the airport. The hangar has some issues (leaky roof, broken windows, needs paint) that need fixed, but the city doesn't seem interested in spending the money. Our Chapter would be willing to fix these issues, but not if we don't have some kind of ownership. Our Chapter would like to have a permanent home so we would like to get possession or at least some kind of long-term lease of the hangar but are not sure how to go about it. We are a small Chapter so we don't have the ability to raise a large amount of money to purchase the hangar. Does any one have experience or advice in working with a small city government on something like this?

Contact EAA 106, the Greater Boston chapter. They saved their pennies and build a chapter hangar at the Lawrence, MA airport. I believe that they rent hangar space to folks with based airplanes.

Also the Fitchburg Pilots Association at KFIT in MA has also built a hangar. I have a passing acquaintance with the lawyer who negotiated the lease a KFIT. I understand that that involved a lot of patience and persistence. I find it amazing how many small airports are managed by city boards who have no idea how to make their facility a success. But persist.

Best of luck,

Wes

Our chapter had a lot of fly-in revenue saved up and they bought the office used by a defuct flight school and the adjacent hangar. They did well enough renting the hangar out to a member for his construction that they were able to gradually by more and more hangars up. They had a bunch (for both construction and just general rental) by the time I left the chapter.

Our chapter leases an old hangar from the airport authority, but we negotiated a long term lease at very favorable rates in exchange for our commitment to make improvements to the hangar. There is some risk because the airport still owns the hangar and not the chapter, but we viewed this as favorable compared to paying local property taxes plus a land lease for a private hangar at the airport, and the cost of improvements was far less than new construction. Thanks to this arrangement we now have 2 hangars and a workshop area totaling about 4500 sq ft with 2 aircraft build projects, a motorglider and 2 light sport aircraft that would otherwise be located on another airport, along with 5 active members. We cover the lease payments and hangar utilities, and are replenishing our hangar improvement fund with the user fees we collect from the hangar occupants, who are paying much less than airport tee hangar rates. Our airport has 100% tee hangar occupancy so there really isn't an alternative for these aircraft/projects, the cost/benefit may be different if your airport has low hangar occupancy. The key is selling the value of EAA Chapter sweat equity to the airport management, although we had built up a sizable hangar fund that allowed us to contract some of the work.