New Airport In Colville Grounded By Flap City Votes To Abandon Project After Site Negotiations Break Down

A plan to build a new $4.5 million airport here has collapsed because of a breakdown in communications among local proponents.

The project’s apparent demise came just as proponents seemed to have the upper hand after more than two decades of struggle with state and federal regulators.

City officials took it for granted over the years that acquisition of the airport site from Vaagen Bros. Lumber was the least of their worries. But frustrating negotiation with Vaagen Bros. prompted the City Council to vote 5-0 on March 18 to abandon the project.

Mayor Duane Scott and Vaagen Bros. President Duane Vaagen, both supporters of the airport, expressed disappointment, frustration and bewilderment about the failed negotiations.

Scott said the city made an offer last November, but Vaagen Bros. “wouldn’t even acknowledge us at all. … I thought we were treated rather rudely and rather badly.”

Vaagen said he had just returned from a business trip Friday and still hadn’t figured out exactly why the city broke off negotiations.

“It looks to me like there was probably a decision made (to abandon the project) and there had to be a reason for it, and I guess we became the reason,” Vaagen said.

Airport supporters have run a gantlet of local criticism while negotiating numerous state and federal hurdles.

Vaagen said his company made a variety of counter-offers in negotiations with Don Huddleston, the Spokane real estate agent city officials hired to represent them. Vaagen was miffed, though, that city officials didn’t come to him directly.

“The real question I have is why do you hire somebody out of Spokane to negotiate the deal,” Vaagen said. “I would say nobody from the city has been in the door for lots of months, probably a year.”

He said he preferred to deal with civic activist Dee McMillan, who served as a go-between for the city and the company until about a year ago.

“I thought it was going great at that point, and I thought that when it ended was when her involvement stopped,” Vaagen said.

Hiring a negotiator is “usually appropriate,” McMillan said. She and Scott both cited their lack of training as negotiators.

McMillan said she offered to intervene again when she discovered the negotiations had broken down, “but at that point neither side involved me.”

Like Vaagen, McMillan speculated that the breakdown may have resulted from pressures by state and federal agencies that ruled out some sites to protect aircraft, others to protect waterfowl habitat.

In order to satisfy federal concerns about a wetland used by migratory waterfowl, city officials agreed to move the runway in the direction of a proposed industrial park along U.S. Highway 395.

Vaagen said he was willing to donate land about a quarter-mile away, but was reluctant to lose the prime development property the city sought. The city didn’t want to pay what the company considered a fair price, he said.

“We didn’t want to ruin that (site) for the next generation or for the community,” Vaagen said. “That’s an area where the city can grow.”

Still, he said the company remains willing to negotiate. He said he thinks an airport that will accommodate commuter flights to Spokane is still needed.

But Scott believes the project is dead.

“The council is not in a mood to negotiate any more,” the mayor said. “As far as the council is concerned, it’s over.”

, DataTimes