Just in time for the holiday travel season, the City of SeaTac wants to use eminent domain to shut down a family's airport parking business.
James and Doris Cassan have operated Park and Fly since the 1960s, slowly purchasing more and more of the property that they originally leased for the business and gradually expanding until they employed more than 40 people.
Now, SeaTac intends to take Park and Fly by eminent domain. The City claims it needs to turn the private parking business into a government-run parking garage, but other evidence suggests the City has considered reselling some of the property to private developers as part of a scheme to turn the area adjacent to the airport into an “entertainment district.”
Trent England, Citizenship and Governance Center Director at the EvergreenFreedom Foundation, says SeaTac’s actions are abusive.
The aggrandizement of airports is sometimes just too much! Here we are, thinking closer to the airport lends to an increase in value. To the contrary, nothing good results! Private ownership is deemed to be subservient to the unreasonable demands of the airport authority.
