Only after the Times/Herald started asking questions
about a project at Destin Airport did Northwest Florida State College
officials begin planning to use the 15,000-square-foot hangar portion
of the building, according to newly released investigative files.
Brian
Shonk, the college's director of public safety, told a state attorney
investigator that he was instructed not to incorporate the "staging
area" into educational plans for the $6 million facility, funded
through Rep. Ray Sansom. But "real near" the time the newspaper started
asking questions, Shonk said college president Bob Richburg asked him
how the space could be used.
"At that time, I began planning for
using it for public safety training," Shonk said, adding that's when he
came up with an idea to put mock apartments in the space for emergency
response drills. He said he was surprised when the college issued a
statement asserting that there was no plans for aircraft storage.
Shonk knew otherwise.
He said that the architect, Jim Dowling, explained early on that the hangar doors were needed to fit a large plane.
"I
don't know if he mentioned Mr. Jay Odom, Destin Jet or just a tenant or
a company, but he said the largest plane that entity had was a Lear
King Jet … and the door needed to be large enough to accommodate that
plane."
At one point, Jay Odom owned a King Air, but it's
unclear what Dowling meant. Odom's corporate jet business presumably
would have handled aircraft owned by other people.
Shonk said he
understood all along that Odom planned to use the building and that one
of Odom's employees attended a planning meeting in early 2008.
Dowling
is the author of an December 2008 e-mail that said he had confirmed
from the "user" of the staging area that multiple aircraft would be
stored in the building.
That e-mail was sent three days after Sansom first denied to the Times/Herald that Odom planned to use the building.
Listen to Shonk's interview with investigator Jim Anderson here. The interview and several others were released today. Earlier interviews were detailed in this story.
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