The city already had purchased the property from Old Granddad LLC for $201,750. A Federal Aviation Administration grant paid for $181,575 of that purchase, according to previous city reports.
Richard Nienstedt, city manager, pointed out at Wednesday’s meeting that the annexation was just bringing land into the city limits that it already owned. He didn’t want community members to think the city had condemned someone’s property to facilitate the annexation.
“This is land we already owned — it wasn’t someone else’s land,” he said.
The acreage would make expansion of the airport’s runway possible at some future point, Nienstedt said at a previous city study session. An expanded runway would allow the airport to accommodate larger aircraft and help solidify the city’s economic development portfolio, he said.
A timetable has not been established for the runway expansion, city officials have said.