OGDEN — Ogden City is not legally obligated to renew tenant leases at Ogden-Hinckley Airport, the municipal government says in its response to a class-action suit by long-term lease holders.

The nonprofit Ogden Regional Airport Association in May filed the civil action in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City alleging that new airport management plans will allow the city to illegally take improvements built into hangars after leases are not renewed. And on June 15, the association and dozens of hangar lessees filed an amended complaint to convert the suit to a class action.

The roots of the dispute are the city’s efforts to curb financial losses at the city-owned airport and develop its west side to attract and support greater commercial operations. Those plans have been opposed vociferously by hangar tenants, who say they have poured large sums into the structures in support of the general aviation purposes of the airport.

But an attorney representing Ogden City filed documents Aug. 23 urging U.S. District Judge Jill Parrish to dismiss the suit. No provision of the lease agreements required the city “to renew the leases in perpetuity or conferred a kind of ‘life estate’ to the tenants,” the city’s attorney on the case, Stephen Noel, wrote in the dismissal motion. “While nothing would prevent Ogden Airport from entering into a subsequent lease agreement following the termination of the original leases, there was no contractual obligation to do so.”

The tenants’ suit alleged the city has strung them along for years with automatic lease renewals. It said the lessees “have placed great stock in being able to reliably and consistently renew their leases.” The renewals have given the tenants “confidence in pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of construction upgrades and upkeep into their respective hangars,” the suit said.

The suit described the city’s updated plans, approved in April by the City Council, as a “plot” to force out tenants to further its economic development goals. “The lease renewals have allowed for hangers to be passed down from generation to generation and in some cases put into family trusts for inheritance,” the suit said.

There is no lessee right “to unlimited, guaranteed and perpetual renewals,” the city’s response said. “Plaintiffs are claiming a right secured by the lease agreement — the right to perpetual renewal — without having bargained for or negotiated such a right.”

The issue is a contractual matter between the city and the tenants, and is not a ‘taking for public use’ of any property interest owned by the tenants, the city argued.

The tenants’ suit said any who lose leases are unlikely to incur the costs of removing their improvements from the hangars. However, the city’s response criticized the plaintiffs for not describing or alleging the nature and distribution of hangar improvements. “Have all the plaintiffs installed improvements? Most? Only a few?,” the city said. And what would be the relief ordered, the city asked: “Guaranteed rights to renew? For how long? Based on what additional criteria?”

The suit as well does not identify what statements were made by any city officials “that form the basis of their ‘reliance’ upon (the city) renewing their lease agreements.”

The city further challenged the sufficiency of a class action claim, asserting the suit is more properly heard in a state court because of its high degree of local specificity.

John E. Keiter of the Durbano law firm referred questions about the case to Douglas Durbano, lead attorney on the suit. Efforts to contact Durbano were not immediately successful.

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