Cave Junction, Ore — A deal that could have brought millions of dollars to the Illinois Valley fails to come to life as a development company doesn’t hold up their end of the deal.
The deal was supposed to bring dozens of jobs to the Illinois Valley, it was supposed to bring new business and with that, new revenue, but just over a year later, the lease agreement that many hoped would do all these things is no more.
“It was quite disappointing when it didn’t work out,” said Josephine County Airport Manager Larry Graves.
In November of 2014 the Illinois Valley Airport was set to become a bustling commercial hub.
“Realistically we would have had 40 or 50 jobs for sure come because of this and quite easily could have reached 100 at the time,” said Graves.
A 30 year lease between Josephine County and the Manor Communities Development company would have brought nearly 13 million dollars in improvements to the sparsely used airport, with a focus on new drone technology, but that deal quickly fell through.
“March, April, May came and went, there was still no activity, no performance, no payments and so finally we canceled the contract on them,” said Graves.
Ending the agreement that could have brought tens of millions of dollars in revenue to Josephine County.
“the status quo is maintained, unfortunately the status quo is no commercial activity or very little commercial activity at the Illinois Valley Airport,” said Graves.
Graves says there is some future interest in the airport, especially from Erickson Aviation which is considering the five-thousand foot runway for a training area.
NBC5 reached out to Manor Communities Development but it seems they’ve stopped operations altogether.
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