THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 12, 1995 TAG: 9512120266
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DALBYS LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
Raw, compressed topsoil cuts a line through an unharvested soybean field. The naked dirt path is 80 feet wide, nearly a mile long and straight as a ruler. Sometimes, a prop plane parks there. And the symbol for ``do not land'' - a large ``X'' - marks each end of the strip.
Robert L. Starer, owner of the Virginia Beach company Computer Dynamics Inc., created the 5,000-foot strip without zoning approval. His Eastern Shore neighbors fear he'll eventually use it to land his Lear jet.
``This runway has been built without permission, without notification of neighbors, and with open disregard to authority,'' said David Griffith, whose home is 1,500 feet from the end of Starer's landing strip. ``If he's brazen enough to construct it without a permit, what will stop him from paving it and bringing in jets day and night?''
The issue came before the Northampton County Planning Commission Dec. 6 when Starer's application to build an airport came up for its first public hearing. His Eastville lawyer, Bert Turner, said the strip wasn't being used, and that Starer would relocate it if necessary.
Turner said the site can't be considered an airstrip if it isn't being used. For weeks, Turner has told officials in this farming community that the hard-packed runway is nothing more than land that has been planted with winter wheat and rye. This is not a case, he insisted, of a landowner building an improvement then claiming hardship to force the county's zoning approval.
``This is not an after-the-fact permit application,'' said Turner.
Residents at the hearing burst out laughing, but commission members were not amused. Northampton has issued a cease and desist order, warning Starer to stop further construction. He was violating the county zoning ordinance, the order said, and possibly the state's Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.
Starer bought 376 acres on Old Plantation Creek in September. He paid $795,000 in cash, according to court records. His wife, Merle, said they have sold their Virginia Beach house and plan to build a new home on the Eastern Shore. They will fly to business meetings from here, she said.
Northampton isn't the first place that Starer has found himself in the middle of a controversy.
For the past two years, Starer has been locked in a legal fight with R. Alan Fuentes over control of Computer Dynamics.
In a 1993 lawsuit, Fuentes, who founded the company, accused Starer, the chief executive officer, of forcing him out as majority stockholder and taking over the firm. That suit is pending. Starer now owns about two-thirds of the company's stock.
This year, Computer Dynamics filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in Bankruptcy Court. Creditors, who are owed millions of dollars, have accused Starer of ``ransacking the company,'' acquiring the profitable divisions for himself and committing criminal acts against the firm.
The creditors sued last month to force Starer out and replace him with a court-appointed trustee.
Among the company's assets in dispute are two airplanes: a Lear jet worth $429,000 and a Cessna worth $19,000, both kept at Norfolk International Airport. The city of Norfolk claims the company owes $15,000 in back taxes on the planes.
The company is now virtually defunct, but at one time it was a government contracting firm and later branched into adult education. Parts of the company are still in business under Starer's personal ownership.
Starer's wife bought their Virginia Beach house last year for $748,992, according to court records, and both she and her husband hold the mortgage.
Bayview Corp., a company owned by Robert and Merle Starer, is the official owner of the Eastern Shore property. Permits aside, the airstrip there has other problems.
Two other small airports sit within approximately a half-mile of Starer's landing strip.
``Adding a third strip just boggles my mind,'' Ted Reynolds, whose home sits on Starer's eastern flight path, told the planning commission. ``What are we up to?''
The Virginia Department of Aviation has told county officials that takeoff and landing patterns for Starer's runway cross those of Page Scott's nearby airport, which has existed since 1967. That's an ``unacceptable compromise to safety,'' it said.
At Wednesday's planning commission meeting, Starer said he and Scott had reached an agreement. Starer said he would realign his strip. In turn, Scott would be allowed to use the north-south runway of his own airport. Much of that runway extends onto what is now Starer's land.
``It's an interesting twist,'' Merle Starer said after the Planning Commission hearing.
With or without an agreement between Starer and Scott, Northampton has an issue to debate. Starer's landing strip is nearly twice the size of others in a county dotted with grass airstrips. His lawyer claims the extra length makes the runway safer. But county officials wonder if Starer has designed the strip for his Lear jet, as his neighbors fear.
``This proposal is very different from anything we've ever considered,'' said Denard Spady, chairman of the Planning Commission. ``We are not obligated to give a private user an open-ended right to bring in any plane.''
Starer did not have a signed contract with Scott to present to the Planning Commission, and he refused to amend his permit application to reflect the runway's proposed realignment. The commission voted unanimously to table Starer's application until January.
Immediately after Starer's public hearing, Northampton officials debated a change in the ordinance that would classify airports by their runways' length, width and type of surface. They also tabled that suggestion.
After the meeting, Starer said he had declined to change the permit because he didn't want to be subject to any new definitions of the word ``airport'' in the county zoning laws.
By controlling the type of runways allowed, the county could, in effect, control the type of plane that could land there.
``The community has some interests that at least need to be thought about,'' said Spady. ``At the very least we'll talk about it in January.'' MEMO: Staff writer Marc Davis contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
FACTORS THAT DETERMINE A RUNWAY'S USE
Some 5,000-foot runways are long enough to handle commercial
jets. But, according to pilots and regional airport managers,
construction and surrounding terrain are at least as important as
length.
Airport officials in Accomack County said the foot-thick concrete
of their World War II-era 5,000-foot runway could handle Boeing 737
airliners and military C-5s. But the softer asphalt of
Martinsville's 5,000-foot strip limits traffic there to 14-seat
corporate jets, a charter-service representative there said.
If the space bordering an airport is flat and open, planes can
land using slow, shallow approaches. This means the runway can
generally handle larger aircraft. But if the terrain forces pilots
to take steep descents, the runway is more suited to smaller,
lighter planes.
- Mike Mather
Map
The Virginian-Pilot
by CNB