Airport commissioners defend closure of Newport News airport’s mobile home park

Several Peninsula Airport Commission members are defending the decision to close the trailer park at the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport and kick out the park’s 77 tenants — calling the move necessary so the struggling airport doesn’t have to spend millions to fix it up.

The board’s chairman, Jay Joseph, said the airport can’t afford to fix failing infrastructure, such as collapsed water lines and a stormwater drainage system that lead to flooding and is “beyond repair.”

“We have neither the authority nor the money to spend the millions of dollars necessary to bring this park up to code,” Joseph said at a commission meeting this week.

“I’d love to have a profitable mobile home park that supports airport missions. But unfortunately, we don’t — we have a failed one.”

The commission, a six-member board that oversees the airport, notified tenants in May that they must leave Patrick Henry Mobile Home Park by Nov. 5.

The airport, which has run the 75-acre park since at least the 1950s, intends to close it. Financial incentives are being offered to those who leave by the end of July, though some tenants said the amount is nowhere near the cost for them to move.

A group of about 20 tenants has banded together to hire an attorney to fight the airport. The attorney, Nathaniel Webhas argued it’s unconstitutional for the airport to take over the private mobile homes without “just compensation” for the trailers and all the money tenants pumped into them over the years.

The commission met publicly Thursday for the first time since removal notifications were sent to tenants. The issue of the trailer park didn’t come up until end of the meeting, when one commissioner asked for an update.

That commission member, Newport News Councilwoman Sharon P. Scott, said that while she’s not opposed to the closure of the trailer park for financial reasons, airport officials could have handled the situation far better.

Scott termed the dollar amount the airport offered to tenants to leave early — a maximum of $2,000 if they left by May — disrespectful to long-term residents.

“I thought that was an insult, to be honest,” Scott told the Daily Press. “If you couldn’t do anything for them, then just shut up.”

Tenants were notified of the closure by official letters from the airport and by signs posted on the park’s community mailbox stand.

“I would have been flabbergasted,” Scott said, if she had gotten word of the life-changing move from a mailbox notice.

Instead, Scott said, the airport should have gathered tenants and families in the trailer park community together to break the news.

“I think it’s a mess,” Scott said. “A lot of those people have been out there for a long time. And I feel bad for them.”

The decision to close the park was made by Airport Executive Director Mike Giardino. It did not require a bpard vote by the commission, though Giardino said he kept the board apprised along the way.

Giardino said the airport isn’t planning to develop the 75-acre site, but that he’s closing the trailer park because it is now losing money, even as the airport already is operating at a significant loss.

He also said the letters from the airport provided the proper legal notification.

“The tenants were properly notified by mail,” Giardino said. “We did what we were supposed to do.”

In a June 3 response to a letter from the tenants’ lawyer, airport lawyer Patrick O’Donnell called the decision to close the park “reasonable and clearly with its rights under the Lease Agreements,” and said Webb’s constitutional arguments were incorrect.

He also warned that financial incentives offered to tenants who leave early will be taken off the table if the case ends up in litigation, and that tenants would also be asked to pay the airport’s legal fees should the airport prevail in any court case.

Two other commissioners also weighed in briefly Thursday.

Brian Kelly, a retired Air Force colonel, contended the closure of the park isnecessary given the airport’s struggling finances. He said the board set the airport’s budget for 2022-23 based on the “hope” that more airline service and grants will come to fruition.

“Barring that, we’re going to be losing millions per year very soon,” Kelly said. “So we can’t spend the money to fix the drainage. To me, that was the clinching thing.”

Another commission member, Lindsey Carney Smith, the managing partner at the Patten, Wornom, Hatten and Diamonstein law firm, said she wasn’t only concerned about the finances, but the massive disruption that would come from fixing water lines that run under the trailers.

“It’s almost an impossibility to do it without displacing the residents there regardless,” Smith said. “That for me was a big consideration. It’s not just about money. It’s about just can’t do it in a manner that doesn’t disrupt their lives.”

While tenants say they enjoy the trailer park’s low crime rate, shaded land and access to local amenities, Giardino says the park’s basic infrastructure is failing, and that fixing drainage issues alone would cost $1.5 million.

The airport, he said, has been losing close to $200,000 a month since the pandemic and is only being propped up by federal grant funding.

The commission told trailer park tenants it won’t charge rent between May and November, and has offered incentives for tenants to leave early — $2,000 if they left by the end of May, $1,000 by June and $500 by July. Before that, tenants were paying $461 a month for the lease, which also included water and trash pickup.

Those incentives are nowhere close to the expense of moving a trailer to a new location — which can cost about $10,000.

But an even bigger problem, tenants say, is that most of the trailer homes can’t be moved at all, given their age and a concern that moving them is unsafe.

That means many trailers will likely be demolished, even as many tenants say they’ve invested tens of thousands in home upgrades.

Some residents already left the park — 73 tenants and their families reside there as of Wednesday, down from 82 in May, according to Giardino. The park had some 250 trailers in the 1990s.

Joseph, a former executive with Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate, said the airport’s staff went well beyond what was legally required by the lease agreement.

“I know it’s not a happy situation,” Joseph said, but he complimented the airport staff for its “compassionate plan to execute the closure.”

Under the lease agreement signed by the trailer park’s tenants, the airport “may terminate this Lease at any time, without cause, upon sixty days’ prior written notice to Tenant.” But a state law requires a 180-day notice for trailer parks that are closing, extending the mandatory move-out date to November.

Aside from the incentives to leave early, Joseph touted the airport’s allowing tenants to live in the park rent-free between May and Nov. 5.

“If they stay the six months, that’s roughly $2,800, and that’s not anything a private landlord would do,” he said.

“We could have simply given notice” and exercised the lease terms, Joseph said. He lamented what he called “incomplete” and “unbalanced” local media coverage of the issue, saying “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Under the lease terms, Joseph added, tenants are required to pay to demolish old trailers that can’t be moved. But the airport, he said, has agreed to cover those costs, too.

He pointed out that the United Way Community Action Network held a meeting at the airport June 11 to provide on-site housing and social service services to residents.

The attorney for the 20 tenants, Webb, said he was talking to his clients and working on a response to the airport’s June 3 letter.

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com