Seltenreich v. Town of Fairbanks, 13357.

• Decision Date: 30 April 1954
• Docket Number: No. 13357.,13357.
• Citation: 211 F.2d 83,14 Alaska 568
• Parties: SELTENREICH et al. v. TOWN OF FAIRBANKS et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

14 Alaska 568, 211 F.2d 83 (1954)

SELTENREICH et al. v. TOWN OF FAIRBANKS et al.

No. 13357.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

March 10, 1954.

Rehearing Denied April 30, 1954.

Robert A. Parish, George B. McNabb, Jr., Fairbanks, Alaska, for appellants.

William V. Boggess, City Atty., Fairbanks, Alaska, for appellee Town of Fairbanks.

Maurice T. Johnson, Fairbanks, Alaska, for Fairbanks School Dist., intervenor-appellee.

Before DENMAN, Chief Judge, and HEALY and POPE, Circuit Judges.

HEALY, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from an order of the District Court of Alaska, 103 F.Supp. 319, denying appellants' motion for an interlocutory injunction enjoining the Town of Fairbanks from closing Weeks Field, an airport owned and formerly operated by the Town. The motion is subsidiary to a plenary suit seeking permanent injunctive relief.

Appellants are severally engaged in aircraft service, or in the operation of a training school for pilots, and prior to its closing were using the field in these enterprises. They, or some of them, appear to own adjacent property, and one of them claims to be the owner of a right of way over lots giving access to the field.

It appears from the showings for and against the motion that beginning with the year 1922 the Town acquired by purchase or otherwise various tracts of the land which serve to make up Weeks Field. Several parcels were acquired by deed from the Territory or from private owners, which deeds apparently contained no restrictions. The bulk of the area was transferred to the Town by the United States, or rather by the Townsite Trustee, its agent. These latter transfers directed that the tracts be held by the Town in trust "for park and recreational purposes," and provided for reversion should they be otherwise used. Subsequently it appears to have been determined that the Townsite Trustee was without authority to impose restrictions of this character; and in order to dispense with them the Town deeded the tracts to the United States which in turn conveyed them back to the Townsite Trustee with instructions to grant the same "omitting the reversionary clause." Accordingly in 1950 the Town obtained the lands unconditionally.

In 1950 the corporate limits of Fairbanks were extended to embrace Weeks Field. About this time an extensive airport, constructed by the Federal government some two miles from the Town, was completed and became available for general public use. It appears that the Civil Aeronautics Administration transferred its functions to the latter field, ceasing supervision over the Weeks airport runway and discontinuing its operation of the control tower there. The Fairbanks School District, an organization independent of the Town, acquired from the latter a parcel of land on the municipal airport and proceeded to build a school there, accommodating ultimately 750 pupils. The school building itself is said to extend into the airport runway. These several developments and other considerations induced a determination on the part of the city council of Fairbanks to close Weeks Field and abandon its use as an airport.

Appellants' counsel frame the question for our decision in this fashion: "May a municipal corporation lawfully abandon a public airport?" In their effort to negative that proposition they have supplied us with a brief of a hundred forty pages citing more than three hundred cases, none of which is materially helpful so far as concerns the specific situation before us. We need not stop to inquire whether appellants have standing to sue; for present purposes, disregarding the Town's argument to the contrary, we assume that they have. Nor is it necessary to explore the broad field of abstract opinion into which counsel's labors have carried them.¹ A sufficient answer to the question as to the validity of the measures the Town of Fairbanks has taken in the specific situation confronting it may, we think, be arrived at in fairly brief compass.

The powers in general of city councils of municipalities in the class of Fairbanks are set out in the Alaska Compiled Laws, Annotated, 1949, Title 16, Article 1, § 35. Subdivision Twentieth of that section authorizes those bodies "to acquire by purchase or otherwise, and to hold real estate and other property, * * * and to sell, lease or otherwise dispose of such real estate and other property, * * * including property acquired or held for any public use or devoted thereto, when in the judgment of the city council the same shall no longer be required for municipal purposes; * * *."² Emphasis supplied. By legislative amendment approved March 22, 1951 it was provided that no sale, lease or other disposition of real property valued at more than $5,000 shall be...