Want Separate Authority For Opa-locka Executive

Tenants have taken their fight to remove Opa-locka Executive Airport (OPF) from the Miami-Dade Aviation Department straight to the top -- petitioning President Barack Obama to place the airport under an independent authority.

ANN has reported on the fight over Opa-locka before. In May 2008, several businesses at Opa-locka filed a complaint with the FAA regarding alleged economic discrimination by Miami-Dade County and its contracted developer for the airport, Michael Adler. The businesses asserted Adler was putting the thumbscrews to them in order to force them to leave, clearing the way for a new, non-aviation business park there.

Threatened with eviction, tenants asked the FAA to invalidate the lease of airport developer AA Acquisitions and grant their businesses long-term leases... which was denied. Six tenants have since filed federal discrimination complaints against the County as well as lawsuits, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has overturned in one case the FAA's no discrimination decision by the County.

"To work with your family and build up a business with your own money only to have a private developer step in at the last moment and threaten to take this land and everything you own and hold dear, it is almost unthinkable," wrote Michael Pizzi, now Mayor of Miami Lakes, in a 2007 letter to Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez. "It is unconscionable to evict these people and force them to lose all of their investment, all they have worked for and cause financial ruin to their families. This is wrong."

Miami-Dade's Aviation Department currently manages the 1,800-acre Opa-locka Airport and MIA. Obtained in 1961 through the federal surplus properties program, Opa-locka was once the busiest airport in the nation... but activity has decreased as land has been given to developers for non-aviation use at the expense of existing and minority aviation businesses, said BMI Salvage's Stephen O'Neal, a 21-year airport tenant.

"In addition," O'Neal added, "there are concerns of racial discrimination and retaliation by the County against minority tenants including the pending eviction from the airport of Opa-locka Flight Line, the only African American owned Fixed Base Operation (FBO) in the United States."

"In his inaugural address President Obama called on us to put aside childish things," O'Neal said, "but the County has demonstrated year in and year out that it has neither the leadership nor constitution to do so and the result is that doing business in Miami-Dade County presents unacceptable levels of financial risk."

O'Neal concluded by calling Miami-Dade's authority over Opa-locka "morally and ethically challenged," adding "the time for responsible management at an airport owned by the citizens of Miami-Dade County is now."

FMI: www.miami-airport.com/html/opalocka.html