PENDLETON — The Pendleton City Council approved new lease language for airport businesses, but tension still remains from a debate that has stretched far past the year mark.

Airport business owners lease ground from the city while owning and maintaining their own buildings. When the city decided to update its lease language, several business owners objected to the inclusion of a “reversionary clause,” contract language that allows the city to retake use of the land once a lease is over.

The two sides alternated between impasse and seeming resolution, requiring a return to the drawing board multiple times.

In the latest instance, the council formed an ad hoc committee to come up with lease language to both sides.

The newest version allows existing tenants to negotiate up to a 30-year lease while satisfying the reversion clause by paying twice the market rate over the life of the lease.

Councilor McKennon McDonald, a member of the committee, said it was a pleasure to work with the group and an example of two sides meeting in the middle.

“We want to work with people,” she said. “We want to have businesses up there.”

But Jeff Guenther, a mechanic at Pendleton Aircraft Service who also served on the committee, said it was difficult for him to be optimistic.

Guenther said the city’s relationship with airport businesses was damaged during the conflict, and the future of the relationship depends on how the city approaches negotiating leases under the new language.

Guenther said it can be difficult to untangle the difficulties of airport lease policy for the rest of the community, but the community would be hurt if the airport’s businesses shutter their doors.

For his part, Steve Chrisman said he’s happy the issue has been put to bed. He said he hasn’t had a chance to look at the new lease language, but he assumed it was a compromise.

Chrisman got a dose of good news later in the evening when the council unanimously approved a $3.6 million bid from Tapani Inc. of Richland, Washington, to build an industrial park for the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range on the north side of the airport.

The city is paying for these improvements with money from state utility loans and a $3 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

Although airport staff have said UAS companies have already approached the city about building a manufacturing plant in the new park, Chrisman said it’s still in the conceptual phase.

While public money, whether federal, state, or local, has paid for most of the infrastructure at the UAS park, Chrisman said most of the incentive talk has revolved around state tax rebates and any new manufacturing facilities at the park would be private developments.