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Potsdam businessman offers to lease and run Potsdam airport

Posted 11/8/17

By CRAIG FREILICH POTSDAM -- Potsdam Municipal Airport/Damon Field could be leased out to a local man involved in several transportation ventures if his proposal is accepted by the village. An offer …

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Potsdam businessman offers to lease and run Potsdam airport

Posted

By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- Potsdam Municipal Airport/Damon Field could be leased out to a local man involved in several transportation ventures if his proposal is accepted by the village.

An offer to lease the airport was included in a letter Village Administrator Greg Thompson read from a letter at the village board meeting Monday that he had received that day from local businessman Randy La Valley.

La Valley owns LaValley Aviation at the Potsdam airport, on State Rt. 11B, east of downtown.

La Valley has offered to lease the airport and assume management of it and its operations, including the fuel sales, fees from things such a rental of hangar space, and basic maintenance, and “ensure continued growth” there, the letter said.

Thompson said this was a new proposal and that he would pursue the matter with La Valley.

La Valley owns Lavalley Transportation on Madrid Avenue, a nationwide trucking company with stations in several cities around the U.S.

The airport is owned by the village and has seen improvements in recent years such as the fuel tanks and pumps and new hangars at the field.

Thompson said that most municipalities that engage in arrangements such as this one were “very happy” about the arangements.

He said if the village does enter into a lease agreement he believed the municipality will still own the airport and operate equipment such as snow plows.