Driving by Woodland state airport on I-5 the other day I noticed all the hangers are gone. Does anybody know what the story is?

The state condemned them, made the renters pull the planes out months ago and just recently demolished them. No plan to replace them because they cant get them far enough from the runway/approach & departure path to meet federal guidelines. Those who have planes there can request tie downs but as they leave the tie downs will be removed. Nothing for transiting aircraft. State manager says the airport will remain open, mostly I think because they took federal money to resurface the runway and if they closed it they would have to repay that money. Hangar availability just got tighter in SW Washington.

Spoke with the state airport manager today and it sounds like I wasn't the first person to call about the changes at Woodland. He mentioned that due to complaints from disgruntled users of Woodland they may install "one or two" transient tiedowns sometime over the summer - maybe. Doesn't sound like much investment from the state in the airports future......

What I'd like to know is who authorized tearing down the hangers in the first place? Once it was determined that new hangers couldn't be built as it wouldn't meet FAA proximity requirements, it seems to me that the existing structures would have been grandfathered in.

Maybe there's something I'm missing but in many places as long as a wall is still standing on an existing structure, the rest can be completely rebuilt.

I remember contractors doing that to a house once, rebuilt three sides then later rebuilt the fourth side.

Call me cynical, but I'm betting someone wants that particular piece of property so that someone is trying to make the airport unviable and unattractive for the state to keep.