A proposal that the state’s largest airport retain a commercial brokerage team using local and international firms to market the former Hawker Beechcraft jet aircraft completion facility won the approval of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission on Tuesday.
The green light came less than a week after the commission’s lease committee vetted and recommended the team of Sage Partners and Jones Lange LaSalle, the only brokers who responded to a request for qualifications from Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/ Adams Field.
The Sage Group’s leadership includes partner Mark Saviers, a longtime real estate broker in the Little Rock area. Jones Lange LaSalle has more than 200 offices and 48,000 employees around the world. It had $3.9 billion in revenue in 2012.
A contract containing the fee the team will receive remains to be negotiated. The contract, which likely will be in place for a year, will result in no money for the team unless it successfully sells or leases the property, according to airport officials.
At last week’s meeting, members of the team said they would vigorously market the property globally to companies and developers within the aviation industry and begin promoting the property.
The recommendation came after Sage Partners and Jones Lange LaSalle offered to market the property globally to companies and developers within the aviation industry and to begin promoting the property as soon as the MRO Americas 2014 conference, which bills itself as the “premier event for the commercial air transport maintenance, repair and overhaul industry.” It is scheduled for April 8-10.
Hawker Beechcraft, the aircraft-maker, vacated the sprawling complex as part of its exit from bankruptcy last year. As a result, the airport expects a $1.2 million hit to its $30.2 million budget this year through a combination of lost rental income and the maintenance and utility costs associated with the complex.
The team also will market some of the airport’s undeveloped property.
The commission also voted Tuesday to allow the commission chairman to appoint two members of the finance committee. The chairman also is on the committee. Under the commission’s old bylaws, the committee was composed of the commission chairman, vice chairman and treasurer.
By tradition, commissioners have served in those assignments on a rotating basis. But the chairman has had the latitude to appoint members of the lease committee and the personnel committee as well as various task forces the commission has created.
The change is part of a larger group of proposed changes being pushed by commission member Tom Schueck, who wants to give the chairman more authority because the new finance committee chairman, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, attended most commission and committee meetings last year by telephone.
The commission took no action on other proposed changes, which include a requirement that commissioners and the committee chairman be physically present at all meetings if they are to act as chairmen. The commission wants to wait for more details on staff efforts to improve the technology associated with participating in the meetings by telephone.
Metro on 03/19/2014