NEWPORT – The City Council is taking another precaution to keep an immigration detention center out of the city.
Last November, a Texas military housing contractor expressed interest in city-owned property, for a possible detention center. It also reached out to Signal Ventures, a data analytics and real estate company, which owns 10 acres of property at the Newport airport.
Although the company withdrew its interest last year and Newport is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to make sure it stays that way – the city is also amending its lease agreement with Signal Ventures.
The changes explicitly prohibit the company from using the space as a detention center and in exchange the city is extending wastewater services to the area.
“This Third Amendment to the Lease would: (1) prohibit the use, sublease, or assignment of the leased premises for a facility, operation, or location designed or used for the involuntary custody or transportation of persons, or for the staging or execution of law enforcement operations related to such involuntary custody or transportation, including deportation, detention, or processing of persons in involuntary custody,” according to a staff report.
Councilors unanimously approved a motion to amend the lease during their Monday regular monthly meeting.
— Shayla Escudero/Lincoln Chronicle
Is this simply approval of a proposed amendment? Is approval of the lessee yet to be obtained?
Extending a sewer line to the airport has a large price tag of over $1,000,000. Sewer currently ends at South Shore. A large on site septic system at the airport is almost as much. That was a very expensive amendment.