The City of Naples could ask for $8 million to $10.8 million a year from the Naples Airport for the lease of the city land it sits on, according to a fair-market opinion solicited by the city council.
It’s a significant jump from the $99 the airport pre-paid for its 1969-2068 lease – $1 a year.
Chicago-based Horwath HTL and its managing partner Bryan Younge conducted an “opinion of fair-market ground rent” of the airport as the Naples City Council and the Naples Airport Authority (NAA) and its board of commissioners negotiate new lease terms and try to hash out major differences in authority during conflict resolution meetings.
The company was “recommended by our FAA expert,” City Attorney Matt McConnell told city council members at their June 15 regular meeting. The company was hired to study the land lease between the city and the NAA to determine its value.
What is the value of the land lease, who benefits from an extension?
Younge concluded there are 235 leasable acres of the 732 acres total on which the airport sits. Runways, aprons and taxiways are for flight purposes and not leasable. The city owns most of the total acreage, while the airport authority is the agency that runs the day-to-day operations of the airport, working with its board of commissioners.
Based on current annual fair-market ground rent for the leasable acreage, the appraiser sees a supported range of approximately $30,000 to $39,000 per acre, indicating aggregate fair-market ground rent of $8 million per year ($7.1 million to $9.2 million). But assuming a 50-year extension of the lease, Younge determined a $41,000 to $46,000 per acre rent for a range of $9.64 million and $10.8 million a year.
A lease extension would mutually benefit both the NAA and the City of Naples, Younge wrote. An extension “confers measurable and, in several respects, monetizable benefits on both parties,” he wrote.
An extension would allow for longer subleases for operators and hangar tenants. It also would strengthen the NAA’s eligibility for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) improvement program grant funding, “which is conditioned upon the sponsor demonstrating adequate control of airport land for the useful life of the grant-funded improvements, Younge wrote.
The Naples Airport is working to allow American Airlines regional jets to operate commercial service at the airport for the first time in 25 years, but otherwise the airport serves turbine business aircraft, fractional ownership fleets, corporate flights and flight schools.
Naples Airport covers one square mile along Airport Road. The 140-acre Gordon River Greenway is just north of the airport and 15-acre Baker Park is just west with paths that lead to and go around the airport perimeter. Opened in 1943 as a military airfield, the airport has grown in usage though not in physical size as the city of Naples has built up around it.
NAA Executive Director Chris Rozansky said he and staff are reviewing the city’s appraisal and “in preparation for the next joint meeting on July 20 do not have comments on it at this time.”
Where do land lease negotiations stand, and why now?
The City of Naples is challenging a new state law making the airport board of commissioners elected. Since 1969, board members have been appointed by the city council. City officials want to cancel the 99-year land lease, while also saying they believe the state law nullifies the existing lease, end the Florida enabling act that created the authority and start over to return the board to appointees of the city with oversight by the city with a lease that gives the city some cash.
The NAA, the city council and the NAA board agreed at a July 6 joint meeting to allow Rozansky, airport attorneys, City Manager Gary Young and city attorneys to work together on lease terms for the two governing bodies to consider at their next joint meeting July 20.
As of Tuesday, June 14, the officials are still working on the terms, Rozansky told the Naples Daily News. NAA and city officials are meeting again Wednesday, he said.
Even if the two sides get to a vote on land lease terms by the city-imposed July 20 deadline, authority board members say they won’t sign it until the city drops its lawsuit against the entity that operates the airport.
The City Council sued the NAA and the Collier County Supervisor of Elections as a way to challenge the law and so the council can meet with its attorneys in closed-door executive sessions. The lawsuit is in abatement – on hold – while state-mandated talks and then mediation take place.
The NAA is in separate required pre-lawsuit mediation with the city but has not filed a lawsuit. The authority’s issues are a proposed ordinance requiring City Council approval of all development at the airport and that it can’t under the new law help the city go against that law by creating new rules. NAA attorneys say the ordinance requirements violate federal law, and the two sides’ attorneys disagree on what is considered aeronautical and therefore entirely in the purview and oversight of the FAA.
Best use of the land is still an airport, appraiser concludes
The land is best used for a general aviation airport, Younge concluded. It “returns the greatest supportable income to the land” and “is the maximally productive use.”
“No alternative uses available within the grant-assurance and Airport-Layout-Plan constraints produces a higher land return,” Younge wrote.
The NAA and consultants concluded a study in June 2025 about moving the airport, determining a move would be too expensive and complicated. The study cost $400,000, paid for by the NAA, and took two years to complete.
The NAA takes no taxpayer money and operates the airport using money from subleases to fixed-based operators, from hangar rentals and fuel sales. Fuel sales make up 67% of the airport’s operating revenue, and its subleases to fixed-base operators, hangar tenants, and commercial tenants run to 2053, according to the Horwath report.
The airport has an estimated $781 million economic impact as of a 2022 Florida Department of Transportation study. It’s Fiscal Year 2026 operating budget is $40.6 million. The airport had no debt as of March 19, 2026.
By comparison, the City of Naples budget is $241 million budget for Fiscal Year 2025-2026, and kept property tax (millage) rates steady. According to a June 19 service agreement signed by City Manager Gary Young and city attorney McConnell, Naples is paying $65,000 for the Horwath appraisal.
With more operations – takeoffs and landings – than Fort-Myers-based Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW), the Naples Airport is only expected to attract more people as they move to and visit Naples and Southwest Florida. The airport hasn’t seen a decline in operations since FY2020, according to NAA public documents.
Operations increased 3.6% to 127,964 in fiscal year 2025 from 123,171 in FY2024, which increased by 3.4% over FY2023, according to the NAA’s annual report. Operations are forecast to increase to 133,306 by 2043, according to the FDOT Federal Aviation System Plan.
Naples Airport is unique compared with its fellow general aviation airports, Younge concluded, and that distinction “is material to the valuation.”
“The airport sits approximately one mile east of the Naples central business district and roughly one and one-half miles inland of the Gulf of Mexico, positioning it within one of the most affluent and supply-constrained trade areas in the country.”
Do you have an opinion about this topic? Write a letter to the editor at letters@naplesnews.com and/or mailbag@news-press.com. Keep it to 250 words or fewer and include your contact info. Have more to say: Send a guest column of no more than 600 words.
J. Kyle Foster is a senior growth & development reporter for The News-Press & Naples Daily News. Reach her by emailing jfoster1@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Naples Airport appraisal says city could get lease of $8 million a year
Reporting by J. Kyle Foster, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By J. Kyle Foster, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News | USA TODAY Network
