Airpark shops in holding pattern

Firms on the approach to Montgomery runway question FAA plans for demolition

Friday, April 21, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette Nicholson Precision Instruments, just outside Gaithersburg, is one of several companies that would be affected by plans to demolish or alter buildings on the approach to the Montgomery County Airpark runway. The business makes parts for area biotech companies such as BioVeris Corp.

Each time a plane makes that final descent, it comes too close, says the Federal Aviation Administration, to a building complex mere feet from the airpark’s fence.

To meet FAA requirements to keep ‘‘runway protection zones” free of obstruction, the part of the building that breaches the zone must be demolished.

And that’s a problem for the five companies in the building, whose owners and occupants don’t know if the entire building or just the section in violation will be razed — and won’t know for a long time. No plans are likely to be even drawn up for at least three years.

The building, comprising several sections, measures almost 30,000 square feet and has five owners, according to the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation Web site.

When he moved Nicholson Precision Instruments into the building at the end of Beechcraft Avenue in 1989, Mike Nicholson envisioned his business staying put for decades to come.

Yet he knew the building was near the runway protection zone — in fact, he played a key role in persuading the county to grant a waiver that let the building stretch across the line.

‘‘Looking back, we probably shouldn’t have [gotten the waiver]. ... The question now is, ‘Are we going to lose enough money to put us out of business?’ That’s not a lot for a small company like ours” — as little as $100,000, said Nicholson, co-owner of Granite Canyon Group, which owns just under half of the building and leases space to Nicholson Precision Instruments.

The quandary stems from when the airpark updated its layout plan in 2002. The FAA found several safety ‘‘deficiencies” and has since required the airpark to undertake a number of improvements, such as installing more runway lights and taking over 23 acres of forest for clearing.

The FAA will pay 95 percent of the cost to relocate the businesses forced to move, but Nicholson and other owners worry that the money could be too little, too late.

‘‘I have no reason to believe that they won’t treat me completely reasonably,” he said. ‘‘But people have suggested that it can be hard to get the full value. Right now, I’m optimistic.”

The first appraisal deemed his shop a ‘‘simple warehouse,” Nicholson said. It did not take into account the $100,000 in upgrades and custom work that made the building capable of holding the high-tech machinery his 16 employees use to make component parts for area businesses, especially Gaithersburg biotech companies such as BioVeris Corp., he said.

The FAA says it will take all additions and renovations into account in paying for the relocations.

Exactly when that will happen is less than clear.

‘‘We haven’t reached the point of dollars and cents,” said Jim Peters of the FAA’s Eastern region. ‘‘It’s a give-and-take process with no deadline in place, but we’d certainly like to do it on an expedited basis.”

The plans have so far rested in the hands of the Montgomery County Revenue Authority, which took control of the airpark in 2004. The revenue authority submitted its assessment of the plan’s environmental impacts to the FAA earlier this month and held the fourth of four required public meetings.

Those meetings have fallen short in dissuading some of the business owners from drawing the conclusion that the entire building will be razed, not just the half that breaches the runway protection zone. The revenue authority insists that the plans have yet to get that specific either way — and won’t for several years.

‘‘There’s never been a ‘cut-it-in-half’ plan,” said Marc Atz, the revenue authority’s executive director. ‘‘We won’t even be looking at the details of [the relocation] until 2009. And we won’t be retaining engineers until at least 2009.”

He was not, however, able to say that the whole building will definitely not be demolished.

‘‘It is conceivable — though I can’t predict at all because I’m not an engineer,” he said. ‘‘But the rumors are being greatly exaggerated at the moment because it’s just way too hazy.”

For John Giganti of Data Design Inc., a ‘‘For Sale” sign hanging in the window to Suite C — occupied by Glazer Contractors — is a harsh omen of his own company’s fate.

The sign has hung there for months, the real estate agent unable to find a buyer.

‘‘No one in their right mind is going to move into a place that’s going to be torn down in a few years,” said Giganti, one of the complex’s owners. ‘‘These buildings at this point are almost unsellable.”

Giganti has already spent $250,000 to add a second floor, and a government contract Data Design is vying for would require an additional $150,000 in improvements.

His dilemma is whether to risk investing the money, only to have the FAA and revenue authority decide that the entire building must be demolished.

Nor does persuading a business to move in in the meantime seem like a realistic outcome.

‘‘So I’m supposed to say, ‘Don’t worry that they’re going to knock the building down, they’re going to pay you back’? People aren’t that dumb.”