File Name:f:\1work\1 - nemesis\investigations\1 - not allocated\bankstown-rwy north-south.doc
Warning: airport sell-offs a runaway disaster
Author: Scott Rochfort
Date: 04/03/2006
Words: 582
Source: SMH
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: News and Features
Page: 1
THE sell-off of Sydney's four main airports threatens the viability and safety of general aviation in the city and will create an urban planning disaster that will be "reviled for years", critics have warned.
In the wake of the controversy surrounding the development at Sydney Airport, the state Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, has criticised the Federal Government for allowing the redevelopment of a 100 hectare non-aviation zone at Bankstown Airport.
He joins a chorus of disapproval from small aviation businesses, who suspect the owners of Bankstown, HoxtonPark and Camden airports are secretly trying to drive them out in order to develop the land. Flying schools have also warned that the recent closure of a runway and taxiways at Bankstown could compromise safety there.
Developers will start work this month on turning one third of Bankstown Airport into a business, manufacturing and retail park. Approval was given last year by the federal Transport Minister, Warren Truss, who has jurisdiction over the development of federal airport sites.
Given Bankstown and Camden airports - like Sydney Airport - have been privatised on long-term leases, they remain Commonwealth land and are not subject to local or state planning laws.
HoxtonPark, part of the $211 million privatisation of Sydney's three smaller airports, will be closed in 2008 when it reverts to freehold status, and becomes subject to local planning laws.
Yesterday, Mr Sartor said: "This just shows the continual reckless indifference by the Federal Government to state planning laws and state planning policies.
"Their legacy for cities like Sydney will be one that they will be reviled about for years."
The State Government claims the Bankstown development will put an extra 13,000 vehicles on roads around the airport during peak hour, which it claims will cost it an extra $100 million in road upgrades.
"We just are amazed at how cavalier they are," Mr Sartor said. "It just is extraordinary that the Federal Government for a quick few dollars sells off public land without regard to local planning policies, without the needs of managing a metropolis like Sydney. The buck is all they care about."
The chief executive of Banks-town Airport, Kim Ellis, insists there will be an aviation presence there under the airport's 20-year masterplan.
"The runway and taxiway are preserved in the masterplan, and certainly are going to outlive you and me," he said.
Mr Truss added that Banks-town's owners had a "very clear obligation" to maintain aviation at the airport. "If there is evidence of a large-scale deliberate rundown of general aviation activity, the Government issues this warning we will intervene," his spokesman said.
However, the recent doubling of lease payments and non-renewal of leases at the airport has alarmed smaller aviation businesses. "They are trying to bankrupt the tenants," said Katrina Dukats, who is fighting the airport's attempts to nearly triple her lease charges.
Several flying schools have warned that inexperienced pilots risk running into serious trouble if they do not have the use of the north-south runway, especially in poor weather.
But Mr Truss's spokesman said: "There are no real safety concerns. If there were safety concerns, we would not have allowed it. Neither CASA [Civil Aviation Safety Authority] or Air Services have any concerns about this issue."
The chief instructor at Schofields Flying Club, Rodney Hyde, said the upcoming closure of HoxtonPark would leave metropolitan Sydney with only one north-south runway.
"If you have enough fuel you can wade them out but if they are embedded you have no choice but to land," he said.
The developers who strafed the low flyers
Author: Scott RochfortDate: 04/03/2006
Words: 1471
Source: SMH / Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: News and Features
Page: 7
Anger has greeted Bankstown Airport's plan to squeeze out small aviators, writes Scott Rochfort.
IT WAS the sudden appearance of a two-metre fence at Bankstown Airport last December that had some tenants worried.
Not only did the "security" fence cordon off a large chunk of land at the southern half of the airport, it blocked aircraft from using some taxiways that had been in use for decades.
Having already seen a runway's closure and having had their lease fees more than double earlier in the year, many aviation businesses saw it as confirmation that the main priority for Bankstown Airport's new owners did not lie in running an airport.
The subsequent appearance of bulldozers digging up the taxiways in the fenced-off area suggested the owners were far more interested in developing the 104 hectares of land they have deemed "surplus" to the 313-hectare airport's aeronautical needs.
"The fact that we take off and land here is basically not part of their agenda," said Bill Miller, who has operated his charter business Bankstown Helicopters at the airport since the mid-1980s.
"Aviation is just a nuisance to them. We're just being steamrolled," said Mr Miller, who has seen his rent increase 108 per cent in the past year.
Compounding Mr Miller's troubles is the airport's 20-year masterplan, which was approved by the former federal transport minister, John Anderson, last year. The development plan will quarantine aviation tenants to the airport's north, uprooting dozens of businesses - including Miller's - which are presently located to the south and west of the site.
Once the area is clear, Bankstown Airport will be free to develop the so-called Bankstown Airport Zone, which will include space for retailers, manufacturing, logistics and a business park. The airport has already leased an extra four hectares of land to the transport company Toll Holdings, and says it is talking to several prospective tenants, which include "some government and some private" bodies. It has made no secret of wanting to attract bulky goods retailers, such as the Bunnings and Aldi outlets that occupy the site.
However, the company developing the fenced-off area, BAC Devco, remains coy about its plans. "We're not being specific at the moment about what we are doing in terms of tenancies," said Mark Gray, the NSW manager of Leighton Properties, which is a part-owner of Devco.
The Federal Government sold Sydney's three remaining general aviation airports - Bankstown, HoxtonPark and Camden - for $211 million in November 2003 to a consortium led by the now Mirvac-owned property developer James Fielding.
At the time, the general manager of James Fielding, Greg Paramor, noted how the consortium would control 150 hectares of "extremely attractive development land in strategic locations" and that the company "had some exciting plans".
More than two years on, relations between the owners and the 100-odd aviation businesses at the airport have hit rock bottom. Already faced with soaring fuel prices and high landing charges, some operators reckon the airport is mounting a convert campaign to drive them out of business to free up more space for development.
Bankstown Airport Limited's chief executive, Kim Ellis, made no secret of the fact that some of his long-term tenants were unhappy. He agreed that some smaller aviation businesses at the airport could struggle to survive in the new "market" environment.
"Bankstown is in the middle of the CBD and it's a business airport," he said, noting that it would soon offer incentive packages for businesses to leave. He cites the much larger aviation businesses, Boeing and Hawker Pacific, as outstanding tenants.
He added that the owners of the airport - Mirvac, Commonwealth Bank and the superannuation trust Westscheme - planned to make a tidy return on their investment. "I think it was a very, very clever investment," he said.
Ellis also makes no secret of the airport's recent move to almost triple rents paid by some aviation businesses and of the airport's preference to see some operators relocate to Camden. "A lot of them when they arrived here almost paid no rent. Change is a hard thing for them," said Ellis, who argued that the airport's recent push to double rents is a reflection of market prices.
"They've been subsidised by the Government and now the place has been sold and the place is not being subsidised anymore."
However, some tenants believe BAL is being misleading about the land's value.
Another sore point for operators is that the airport is not renewing some leases. "The asset we acquired for old age is no longer available to us," claimed Katrina Dukats, who said she originally set up her business at Bankstown on the understanding she would be able to sell it on when she retired.
Dukats said she believed when she acquired the land during government ownership that, although it was not freehold, it would be hers in perpertuity .
But Ellis said there was always a "caveat emptor" when people built businesses on leased land. "There's always a degree of uncertainty when a lease ends: will the landlord renew?"
Aircraft operators, however, argue the uncertainty only came when the airport fell into private hands.
One non-profit flying club already forced to relocate to Bankstown after Schofields Airport was closed in the 1990s reckons the rent rises will send it bankrupt. Schofields Flying Club's head instructor, Rodney Hyde, said the rent rises will mean an extra $14,000 in costs a year for his club, which the club cannot afford. "We did well last year, we made a small loss," he said.
Perhaps the best illustration of the rapid decline of aviation at Bankstown is the number of aircraft movements, which has halving since the late-1980s.
Aviation enterpreneur Dick Smith laid the blame not on the owners but on the Federal Government for selling the airport. "They've unintentionally destroyed a very viable general aviation industry because they have no policy," he said.
Bankstown City Council is also worried about the airport's redevelopment, given that it needs development approval only from the Federal Government since it is still Commonwealth land. Like Sydney Airport, Bankstown has been leased out for 99 years.
Bankstown's Mayor, Helen Westwood, said her relations with the airport owners had been cordial. But she admitted council has little power to stop development. "Our concern is that the development is appropriate for our area," she said.
"What we don't want to see is development there that takes away from our existing commercial centres," Westwood said. She said she was yet to see evidence of the airport following Sydney Airport's lead and developing a shopping centre.
The council is also concerned about the impact planned earthworks at the airport will have on the flood plain in the areas.
Westwood said the Federal Government did not divert any of the money it earned from the sale of Bankstown into the surrounding infrastructure. Roads around the airport, for instance, could feel the strain of more trucks.
Short leases pull retirement rug from under their feet
SINCE 1982 Dieter Siewert has built one of Bankstown Airport's largest general aviation businesses.
He calculates he has invested up to $5 million building up his air charter business Airtex, which has 50 employees and 18 aircraft. But the new private owners of Bankstown Airport have renewed the 20-year lease on the land on which he built his maintenance hangars for only three years, and Mr Siewert, 63, says his superannuation plans are ruined.
"It's stuffed my life. It has totally destroyed me," he says. "I worked for 20 years building a business. It is a very good business and we can't sell it as I don't know where we're going to be in three years' time."
Like many operators at Bankstown, he says he understood when he set up his business under government ownership that he could sell it and transfer his lease when he decided it was time to retire. Mr Siewert, whose business is in the area of the airport designated for non-aviation development, says: "I can't start all over again by building another building that I may be kicked off again in another three years."
Aminta Hennessy has been a flight instructor at Bankstown since 1967, and founded the flying school Clamback & Hennessy in 1981. Hennessy reckons she has spent $2 million building hangars and acquiring aircraft, and is now "left with nothing" for retirement, given she too will eventually be pushed off her land.
"I can't see aviation as a good business for me," she says.
HAPPY LANDINGS
Camden airport
HoxtonPark airport
Bankstown airport
Cost of privatising three airports $211 million. (November 2003)
BANKSTOWN
Lease 45 years plus 49 year extension
Estimated development costs $162 million, 313 hectares
Aviation related land 142 hectares
Business zone 99 hectares
Employment zone 52 hectares
HOXTONPARK
Estimated development costs $79 million, 82 heactares
Estimated developable non-aviation related land 60 hectares
Airport will be closed and revert to freehold land in October 2008.
CAMDEN Lease 45 years plus 49 year extension for 196 hectares Aviation related land 100 hectares
Business zone 83 hectares
Sell-off means second airport may never fly
Author: Matt Wade and, Anne Davies
Date: 10/04/2003
Words: 464
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: News And Features
Page: 6
Fresh doubts about a second major airport for Sydney were raised yesterday when the Federal Government dumped plans to upgrade Bankstown Airport to ease air traffic congestion.
The Government announced details of its planned sale of Bankstown, Camden and HoxtonPark airports this year in the last stage of its multi-billion-dollar airport sell-off.
The acting Transport Minister, Wilson Tuckey, said turmoil in the aviation industry after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the collapse of Ansett meant that Bankstown Airport would not need to be upgraded as a condition of its sale.
The Government had flagged plans for Bankstown to take overflow traffic from Sydney Airport, especially aircraft serving regional areas.
Its Bankstown decision will ease fears in nearby areas about increased aircraft noise, but it will anger residents in a swathe of suburbs under Sydney Airport's flightpaths who had been hoping for noise relief.
The Government has indicated that it will not reconsider a second Sydney international airport until at least 2005. But Government sources said yesterday that upheavals in the aviation industry since 2001 had ``changed thinking" on the issue.
The sale will also reshape urban development in western Sydney by clearing the way for a major building at HoxtonPark Airport. It dramatically increases the value of the site by allowing it to be turned into a new housing estate or business park, or a combination of both, in five years.
``HoxtonPark airport will be sold with a shortened airport lease of five years with the land then converting to freehold title," the Government's statement said.
The land's value would depend on its zoning, but it could be worth well over $1 billion if residential development was permitted.
An area south of the airport is already earmarked to be subdivided into 1600 new housing lots and Liverpool Council is likely to support rezoning. ``After the lease expires we would prefer to see it rezoned for economic or employment purposes," a spokeswoman said yesterday.
Because of the airport's proximity to the planned Orbital road being constructed around the fringe of Sydney, there will be pressure from groups such as Western Sydney Economic Development Board to convert it into an industrial park.
However, the loss of the airport has horrified the aviation community. ``I can't believe the Government would do such a thing," said leading aviator Dick Smith. It would be a ``catastrophe" for the industry because it would lose an important training facility.
There may also be another hiccup for developers the airport has an interim listing on the National Estate because it still retains traces of its World War II heritage, including the original airstrip surface and hideouts in case of a Japanese attack on Sydney.