Development Advisory
Hangar development: put capital behind demand you can measure.
We advise on airport land, FBO facilities and hangar development where demand, lease economics and capital requirements must align before significant investment is committed.
Development strategy, feasibility and long-term planning for aviation assets and leaseholds.
A waitlist is not demand.
Names appear on several lists at once, and a portion will not pay the rate the building requires. A list of twenty is routinely presented to a lender as twenty tenants. It is rarely more than a handful of signatures.
A record of interest, collected without a price attached.
Most lists are gathered over years, without qualification and without a rate. People add their names at three fields simultaneously, then take the first unit that opens.
Nothing on the list has been tested against what the building actually costs to deliver, which is the only question that matters at the point of commitment.
- Whether the aircraft still bases in the market
- What that owner pays today, and where
- Whether the rate your pro forma needs is payable
- How many of the twenty names are the same six aircraft
Qualified depth, absorption pacing and achievable rate.
Each name is qualified by aircraft type, current base and rate paid today, then ranked by likelihood of signing at the rate the project requires.
That ranking is tested against how quickly comparable units actually filled at comparable fields — and against the rate per square foot the market supports by unit size and door height.
- A defensible lease-up curve, not a straight line
- Unit mix and door heights matched to real aircraft
- An achievable rate with comparable evidence behind it
- A phasing plan, or a recommendation not to build yet
Method
Three tests, run before a dollar is committed.
Each one is independently verifiable, which is what a lender, a sponsor and an equity partner all need before they will underwrite a hangar project.
Waitlist depth
Every name qualified by aircraft type, current base and rate paid today, then ranked by likelihood of signing. The list that survives qualification is the one the pro forma is built on.
Absorption pacing
How quickly comparable units filled at comparable fields, and what that implies for your lease-up curve — including the months of carry before stabilization.
Rate benchmarking
Achievable rate per square foot by unit size and door height, measured against the fields your tenants would otherwise choose. Rate assumptions are where most pro formas break.
Unit mix
What to build: box hangars, T-hangars, or a mix, at what door heights. The wrong mix leaves revenue on the ground and cannot be corrected after the slab is poured.
Phasing
Staging the build so each phase funds the next, rather than presenting a sponsor with a single unfinanceable request.
Leasehold economics
Ground rent, term, reversion and improvement ownership at the end of the lease — the terms that determine whether the return survives the last five years of the deal.
Brown Field Municipal — San Diego.
Underused airport acreage with measurable demand and no coherent development framework behind it.
We sized based-aircraft demand and hangar waitlist depth across the San Diego basin, tested absorption against rate benchmarks, and phased the build so that each stage funded the next.
The result was a plan positioned for sponsor approval and staged capital deployment, rather than a single unfinanceable request.
Airports, developers and lenders asking the same question from three sides.
Airport sponsors
Parcel strategy and phased development frameworks for underused land — what the field can support, in what order, and what to require of the operator who builds it.
Developers and operators
Feasibility before commitment: whether the demand is real, what to build, and what the leasehold terms need to look like for the return to hold.
Lenders
Independent review of a borrower’s demand assumptions and absorption schedule, in the form a credit committee can actually use.
Equity
A demand case and phasing plan that survives diligence, plus a view on where the project sits against comparable assets that have already traded.
The study either supports the building or it does not.
We take the assignment with no position on the outcome. A demand study that concludes the market will not carry the rate is worth considerably more than one that confirms what everyone hoped.
Where the demand is there, the same work becomes the financing package — because the numbers a lender underwrites are the numbers the study already produced.
Development advisory sits alongside our transaction practice. An owner considering a build is often also weighing a sale, and the two decisions inform each other.
The firm
Senior principals, involved throughout.
Griffin Towers is an independent advisory firm focused on aviation transactions and select strategic assignments.
The practice is intentionally focused. Engagements are led directly by senior principals from initial analysis and valuation through negotiation, diligence and execution.
We favor preparation, discretion and disciplined judgment over transaction volume.
A private overview of the firm, representative experience and selected capabilities is available upon request.
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Boulder, Colorado 80304