When Saratoga County told Adirondack Soaring to remove trailers of planes and equipment from the area it was storing it at at Saratoga County Airport in Milton, the gliding club was outraged and claimed their small aircraft were being forced out in favor of big jets.
Turns out, the gliding club was storing numerous trailers on land that wasn’t being leased. It took a bit of time for anybody to notice, said Dick Rowland, chair of the County buildings and grounds committee, because another gliding club, Saratoga Soaring, leases land with a hangar.
“Adirondack Soaring came in and just plopped their equipment down in an open spot on the airport. All of a sudden, we started questioning ‘What is all this stuff?,’” said Rowland. “We said, ‘You gotta take your stuff off, it’s not a leased area.’ It wasn’t a controlled area, they’re coming and going out of this area and we had no idea who was who, what was what.”
Rowland has come up with a possible solution to the conflict. At the Monday, Sept. 12, meeting of the building and grounds committee, he proposed issuing Adirondack Soaring a temporary lease agreement, perhaps on a yearly basis, until a hangar and something more permanent can be reached.
“My proposal was, let’s get them a spot for a year. If it takes longer to get the hangar site set up, at least they’ll have a place to store the equipment for a year at a time,” said Rowland.
Besides the confusion of what equipment was which gliding club’s, Rowland said there were also issues of responsibility.
“Let’s say somebody brings their plane to the airport and it gets broken into and damaged. It’s on our airport, we didn’t control access to it, is it our responsibility? Well, it’s their stuff … I want them to know if they leave their stuff on our airport, these are the rules you’re leaving it under,” said Rowland.
Rowland said it should be simple for Adirondack Soaring and the County to work together to find an agreeable solution.
“If somebody took their glider in a trailer, pulled it over into Hannaford parking lot, dropped it off, came back two weeks later, took it out and flew it around, then brought it back, would Hannaford have a problem with that? Yeah, they would,” said Rowland. “Let’s be above board and let’s do business together.”
A draft of the temporary lease is expected to be brought to the table at the next grounds committee meeting and Rowland said while the logistics of it are far from nailed down, it would probably be based off the lease agreement with Saratoga Soaring.
Adirondack Soaring wants a more permanent place at the airport and brought forth a rough proposal for an 80- by 100-foot hangar that would be constructed on about 45,000 square feet of land about 50 feet west of the Saratoga Soaring hangar.
“The existing leasehold with Saratoga Soaring is drawn out and next to it I have a flipped image of the exact same area, suggesting we put the Adirondack building about 50 feet away from the Saratoga line,” said John Mahony of Adirondack Soaring.
The proposed hangar location is behind a row of trees that would provide protection for the gliders.
There was some concern about the proposed hangar’s proximity to an area reserved in the capital plan for possible future T-Hangars but Rowland said the hangar would require FAA approval so the site would be thoroughly reviewed and necessary adjustments made.
Some county supervisors were planning a trip to the airport to look at the proposed site.
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