AVIATION FIRM ENDS AIRPORT 30-YEAR LEASE.

Byline: Helen Gao Staff Writer

BURBANK - Upset with Burbank Airport's plan to reclaim two of its hangars, Media Aviation, which provides corporate jet storage and executive conferencing facilities, will pull out of its 30-year lease, officials said Monday.

Lewis Wolff of Wolff-Dinapoli LLC, a partner in Media Aviation, said the airport's take-back plan would effectively destroy his investment.

``By taking whatever they are taking puts us in a negative cash flow situation,'' he said. ``They put us in a position where we had to do it.''

Under the terms of its contract, Media Aviation has the right to turn the lease back to the Airport Authority, which estimates it will have to repay the company $15.8 million. Media Aviation's last day at the airport is scheduled to be June 4.

Wolff would not elaborate on exactly how the loss of the two hangars would affect his company.

But in a three-page letter to the Airport Authority, he sid his company has invested some $17 million to improve its premises since 1996 and that the airport is ``simply taking private property in order to reap the economic benefits'' Media Aviation has created.

Victor Gill, spokesman for the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, said the agency needs the hangars to accommodate its police and fire departments and to relocate rental-car parking lots.

In a closed session Monday morning, the authority agreed to take back the lease.

Despite the termination of the lease, Gill said Media Aviation's operations will stay on and that the Airport Authority will hire a contractor to oversee them.

``It certainly is a financially viable thing for us to do,'' said Gill. ``What's ahead for us is to figure out how to proceed.''

Both sides claimed each other's actions came as a surprise. Wolff said that until now his company had enjoyed a ``very constructive'' business relationship with the airport.