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Troup County and the City of LaGrange have signed off on changes to the airport lease agreement with Aerotron, requested by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT).

Aerotron and the county, which oversees the LaGrange-Callaway Airport, originally agreed to a pair of leases for land at the airport. One was for 15.5 acres to develop a 270,000-square-foot industrial aviation complex. The second ground lease was for 1.585 acres to develop a 12,000-square-foot hangar.

Airport Director Troy Anderson said the first agreements were sent to GDOT, the gatekeeper for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which approves any and all construction of airport properties that utilize federal funding.

“The airport has received numerous grants for runway extensions and a number of other things, so we have to comply with those rules as part of the process to get the approval for construction,” Anderson said.

Anderson said their biggest issue was that there were no aviation-specific ties to the airport in the original agreement, other than to utilize the property for aircraft component repair and ground logistics to send it to other places around the world.

Extensive adjustments were made to the agreement that will change the 270,000-square-foot complex to a 70,000-square-foot facility and 100,000 square feet of open apron space.

“The intent is to bring aircraft as large as a 737 to the airport, bring them in and park them on that space, cannibalize components that can be refurbished, and then shred those aircraft and sell them,” Anderson said.

The two leases have been reduced down to one, with the amount of cost that’s now going to be invested to make a pathway from the existing taxiways to this apron is extensive, Anderson said.

“We have negotiated to eliminate the 12,000-square-foot hangar space to allow them to spend the resources that were dedicated to that,” Anderson said. “What they’re asking is going to take years, and the airport is going to be gaining significantly more with this new arrangement.”

“The change to this lease essentially amounts to [a value increase to the] 680,000 square feet [appraised] at five cents a square foot. To meet the FAA guidelines, that has been mandated to be increased. So with a recent appraisal of the property, that figure shoots from five cents a square foot to 9.2 cents per square foot,” Anderson said, explaining the lease is now more valuable. “We were going to be getting about $38,000 a year. Now it’s on the order of about $62,000 to $63,000.”