ST. LOUIS 鈥 An appellate court panel on Tuesday upheld the city鈥檚 voiding of a developer鈥檚 lease of a site at St. 不良研究所导航网址 Lambert International Airport, allowing Boeing Co. to use it in its planned $1.8 billion expansion.
The Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District said Airport Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge had the authority to end a deal with Bi-National Gateway Terminal LLC in 2019 because of the firm鈥檚 failure to pay back rent and meet other requirements.
鈥淭here is no dispute it was in the best interest of the City to nullify and void the...lease as appellants were not able to meet the enumerated preconditions,鈥 Appellate Judge Michael Wright said in the decision.
The three-judge panel upheld an earlier ruling by St. 不良研究所导航网址 Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser.
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Bi-National, which wanted to establish an international cargo facility at the site, argued in its lawsuit that the voiding of the contract could only occur via a new ordinance passed by city aldermen and signed by the mayor and comptroller.
But the appeals court agreed with Sengheiser that an ordinance approved earlier in 2019 that revised the lease had given the airport director unilateral authority to terminate it.
The trial judge in his decision noted that Bi-National had failed to pay $323,545 in past rent, plus some utility bills.
The site at issue is on the north end of the airport along Banshee Road and includes buildings from a long-vacant airplane manufacturing complex. Under the last version of Bi-National鈥檚 plan, the old buildings would have been rehabbed and financing would have involved state historic tax credits.
Boeing plans to tear down the buildings and replace them with new construction.
Hamm-Niebruegge said Tuesday that the ruling is 鈥渘ot a surprise to us鈥 and that she and the city鈥檚 attorneys all along believed she had the authority to end the Bi-National lease.
Ricardo Nicolopulos, Bi-National鈥檚 president, declined to comment.
The new Boeing lease also includes a larger area of airport-owned property on Lambert鈥檚 eastern end in Berkeley.
Boeing officials earlier this year confirmed the company is building a manufacturing site for combat aircraft as part of the $1.8 billion expansion project at Lambert. Aldermen approved the lease last year.
But the company wouldn鈥檛 say whether it鈥檚 competing to build the next generation of Air Force fighter jets, whether the expansion project is tied to that competition or what other programs might occupy the site.
The old aircraft manufacturing site that will be razed was used to produce World War II military planes by Curtiss-Wright and other aircraft for McDonnell-Douglas in later years.
Removal of the complex, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, has been OK鈥檇 by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Hamm-Niebruegge said preliminary work is underway there now, including the removal of asbestos.
View life in St. 不良研究所导航网址 through the Post-Dispatch photographers' lenses. Edited by Jenna Jones.
