THE CASE OF THE PURLOINED AIRPORT: A CLAIM OF INEPTITUDE

I know you would like to think that those of us who work for an investigative reporting publication dig out our big stories from our network of confidential sources and our own hard-nosed investigations. In many cases, that is absolutely true. But the original tips have to come from somewhere– and in many cases, they come from our readers. And in many instances (preferably, those tips are accompanied with supporting documents. For example, in March 1994, when Key West The Newspaper was just a few months old, a gentleman brought us what turned out to be a pretty big story. He had just lost a lawsuit which resulted in, he said, Monroe County being able to literally steal a very large piece of property on the upper end of the island from him and his family. This was not just any piece of property. It was the property occupied by the Key West International Airport! And indeed, a large file of documents he provided seemed to document his claim.

His father had been one of three Chicago investors who had purchased almost all of the easterly end if the island in 1950 for development purposes. That purchase included almost all of what is now New Town– including the airport, then called Meacham Field. Back in 1925, the property had previously been purchased by Palm Beach millionaire Malcolm Meacham from William R. “Billy” Porter’s Key West Realty Company– and Meacham had constructed the airport and loaned it to Pan Am Airways. When Meacham died in 1929, the property reverted to Porter’s company.

About 1940, Monroe County began to develop Key West Municipal Airport on Boca Chica Key. But then came World War II. The military took over both Meacham Field and the property on Boca Chica Key with the promise that, after the war, both properties would be returned to the owners with all improvements. That promise was kept for Billy Porter’s Meacham Field– but not for the county’s Boca Chica property, which now included a fully-developed military airport. The military simply refused to give the Boca Chica property back to the county and, instead, intimidated the county into selling the property for a song and went on to build a major Navy airfield there.

So, at that time, Key West had only one airport and it was privately owned. And county officials wanted an airport. So they began to pressure Porter to sell his airport to the county. The good news for the county was that Meacham Field was for sale but the bad news was that Porter wanted more money than county officials wanted to pay. So while the county was dicking around, Porter sold the whole eastern end of the island, including the airport, to the Chicago Three, which is how they were known locally. So now, county officials started pressuring the Chicago group to sell the airport. They even threatened condemnation. And there was the harassment, including the county crews digging up the streets for long periods of time, disrupting work at the Chicago Three’s development sites. The son of one of the Chicago investors– who brought us this story– said that he was a young boy at the time and he recalled putting on a fresh white shirt every Tuesday morning and, on his bicycle, delivering envelopes to selected government officials. He said that, at the time, he didn’t know what was in the envelopes, but he did note that the street-digging stopped for awhile after the envelopes were delivered.

During this period, the City of Key West was also bidding to buy the airport. And it was not as if the Chicago Three didn’t want to sell it. They did. But what they really wanted was the airport gone. They wanted to develop that beautiful property. They didn’t want an ugly, smelly airport there. Finally, in 1952, under pressure, they agreed to sell Meacham Field to the county. But fearing that the county might want to lease parts of the property for commercial uses other than an airport, the deed included a “reverter clause,” which specifically restricted the use of the property to an airport– and nothing else! And if the property was ever used for anything else, the ownership of the property reverted back to the Chicago Three or their families.

Well years passed. The airport gradually developed and the name was eventually changed to Key West International Airport. And one day in 1991, one of the heirs of the Chicago investors visited Key West and he happened to notice that, in addition to an airport occupying the property, there was also a teen center, a Highway Patrol office and a county public works facility. Whammo bammo! The heirs sued, citing the reverter clause and demanding the property be returned to them. And they won! After hours of testimony, the judge signed an order that would have transferred the airport property back to the heirs– and then he went on vacation. County officials panicked and the county attorney called the judge on vacation and they had an over-the-telephone meeting without the attorney for the heirs involved. (That;s illegal, of course. But it’s Key West, so what the hell!). After that private conversation, the judge decided that he had signed the wrong order, so he had the original order pulled and signed the “right” order when he got back to town. Go figure.

The Miami Herald summed it up this way: “A new kink in Monroe County’s lawsuit over Key West International Airport raised the specter of scandal and left local officials with only one line of self defense– a claim of ineptitude.

NOTE: Dennis Reeves Cooper founded Key West The Newspaper (the Blue Paper) in 1994 and was editor and publisher until he retired last November. But he says he has one more adventure in him and he has applied to join the Peace Corps. While that application is pending, he is writing a weekly column for the Blue Paper.