Virginia Airport plan back on city radar

The eThekwini Municipality has dusted off its flight plan for redeveloping Virginia Airport and is calling in experts to advise it on getting it off the ground.

This emerged in a new tender document which seeks redevelopment proposals for the site and for the relocation of the airport, possibly beyond Durban’s boundaries. It comes four-and-a-half years after the council resolved to close the airport, but in the face of resistance to the move and an expected extension of operators’ leases, decommissioning is now unlikely before 2022. News of the tender has taken DA ward councillor Shaun Ryley by surprise, and irked airport operators who said the city’s indecisiveness left them in limbo.

According to the document, the city was planning a mixed-use redevelopment of the prime strip of coastal land and wants a consultant to draft a report spelling out “whether the market has the appetite for the development; costs involved; how it would be funded; expected rates revenue; likely job creation; and a suitable empowerment model”. The call for tenders was initially posted on the city’s website on August 29. This was then removed and reposted on September 5 with the deadline for submissions now on Wednesday.

Two city officials, who were not authorised to speak to the media, said some operators at Virginia Airport were operating without leases. Instead of paying rent, they were paying an “occupational damage” fine. But Daryl Mann, owner of Aero Natal, which operates five hangars at Virginia, disputed this. He insisted he had a lease, signed in 2012, and which expired in 2022. “I just spent R150000 on lawyers verifying my lease as contractually binding,” he said.

The officials, who were familiar with the leases, countered this, saying that the city had offered the operators a five-year lease in 2012, with the option of extending it for five more years, but this was not exercised in 2017 because the airport was supposedly in the final stages of being cleared. The airport’s decommissioning was now not expected to be completed before 2022, with operators likely to be offered three-year leases, according to those in the know.

In an emailed reply to Ryley on September 5, explaining why the tender document was removed from the website, Mimi Ndokwane, senior manager of the city’s economic development and investment promotion unit, said: “The ad was placed in error last week and had the wrong dates on it. It was supposed to be advertised with a two-week turnaround time from 5 to 19 September. This mistake has been rectified today and the correct ad now appears on our website.”

It was not clear if the tender meant that the city planned to deviate from its 2014 decision to move recreational flights to Scottburgh Airfield, and commercial flights to King Shaka International Airport. The decision was reaffirmed in 2017 and again in April this year by the city’s executive committee and full council. Apart from advising on development options for the 29.6-hectare site and the relocation of the airport, whoever wins the tender will be required to “obtain consensus with interested and affected parties”.

But they could face a tough time. Mann was adamant that he would not move to Scottburgh, which he said was not conducive to general aviation. Other operators have in the past pressed for a move to King Shaka International Airport, but this would require significant funding. Mooted moves to Scottburgh and Pietermaritzburg have drawn flak in the past. Ryley said he had long been against decommissioning the airport.

“The best solution would be for the municipality to investigate incor- porating the airport into a new development of the site, which means the city would not lose the valuable resource of a municipal airport catering for general aviation which has the potential to be a significant contributor to the city’s economy. I made this proposal to council earlier this year, but the ANC wasn’t prepared to listen,” he said.

The municipality was last week asked to comment on plans for the airport, but had not responded by the time of going to publication.