By By MaryClaire Foster
Recent proceedings involving the City of Atmore and landowners has some individuals with property adjacent to the airport upset about how the city has handled itself with the attempted acquisitions.
Robert Glick recently settled with the city out of court over 1.57 acres of farmland he owned off of Hwy. 31 across from the airport.
Glick said people from out of town and not from Atmore first brought the land acquisition to his attention.
The city’s lack of personal effort to speak with the landowners about the plans is what Glick said upset him the most.
Atmore resident Randy Nichols was at the court proceedings in Brewton Friday to sit in on the still unresolved litigation between the city and defendants J.E. Golden Family Limited Partnership and Bobbie Weekley, as well as one unknown defendant. Nichols’ father, I.G. Nichols Jr., owns farmland near the airport and according to a map given out by the engineering firm handling the airport’s development, Volkert and Associates Inc., is marked as a future acquisition.
Nichols was given a chance to address the court by the presiding judge, Ben Bowden, following proceedings. He took the opportunity to express his frustration about what he saw as a revelation about the city’s plans that was brought forward from testimony heard that day. The revelation was an extension of the airport’s runway, when previously Nichols said he and other landowners had been led to believe the land was being acquired solely for a runway protection zone.
Nichols also raised the point of the area being residential and the plans excluding the acquisition of property that includes a house even though it is in between two parcels that were included in the acquisitions.
Nichols too said that had the city come to the landowners personally things could have gone differently.
Atmore Mayor Howard Shell declined to comment.