Aviation · San Diego, CA

Crownair Aviation

Fixed Base Operations facility, hangars, and a City of San Diego operations garage—delivered with a prevailing-wage strategy that protected the primary program.

Client: Crownair Aviation
Horine Group Role: Construction management & project leadership
Project Size: FBO building, two 90' × 90' hangars, City operations garage
Location: San Diego, CA
Project Type: Aviation
Status: Completed

Overview

Project overview

Crownair Aviation called for construction of a Fixed Base of Operations (FBO) building together with two 90' × 90' hangars—an aviation campus that had to perform for operators, tenants, and the City of San Diego under the terms of Crownair’s ground lease.

As part of that lease agreement, the program also required an Operations Garage for the City of San Diego. That public-facing component introduced prevailing-wage requirements that, if applied indiscriminately across the entire project, would have reshaped the economics of the private FBO and hangar work.

Horine Group’s leadership on the assignment went beyond coordinating trade work. It required a clear reading of wage applicability, disciplined separation between the City garage and the primary Crownair scope, and the documentation needed to keep the larger project on a commercially viable path.

Objective

The objective

Deliver a complete FBO and hangar campus that met Crownair’s operational needs while satisfying the City of San Diego’s ground-lease obligation for an Operations Garage—without allowing public wage requirements to inflate the private program beyond what the project could support.

Challenge

The challenge

Aviation projects sit at the intersection of specialized facility requirements, ground-lease obligations, and municipal oversight. Crownair’s program was no exception. The City Operations Garage had to be built under prevailing wage, as required. The risk was that those requirements could migrate onto the FBO and hangar work—adding more than a million dollars in labor cost to a project that had not been underwritten that way.

The challenge was therefore both technical and strategic: construct the garage correctly under prevailing wage, while demonstrating to the City that the primary Crownair facilities did not qualify for the same requirement—and keeping schedule, quality, and coordination intact across both scopes.

Scope

Horine Group’s role

Construction management and project leadership for the FBO building and two 90' × 90' hangars
Delivery of the City of San Diego Operations Garage under prevailing wage
Coordination of lease-driven public obligations with the private aviation program
Documentation and agency engagement supporting wage-applicability determinations
Schedule, cost, and construction oversight across a multi-building aviation campus

Approach

How the work was structured

Horine Group treated the City garage and the Crownair FBO/hangar work as related but distinct delivery problems. The garage was planned and executed under prevailing wage as required. In parallel, the team assembled the factual basis to show that the primary project did not meet the criteria for the same labor requirement.

That separation mattered. It allowed Crownair to fulfill its ground-lease commitment to the City without converting the entire campus into a prevailing-wage program. Construction coordination, contractor management, and on-site decision-making remained focused on delivering aviation-ready facilities on time and to the standard the FBO business required.

Critical issues

Key challenges along the way

Prevailing-wage exposure on the primary FBO and hangar scope—resolved by demonstrating to the City that those facilities did not qualify, while still building the Operations Garage under the required wage structure. The outcome preserved more than $1 million in labor dollars for Crownair.

Lease-driven dual accountability—balancing City expectations for the garage with Crownair’s need for a functional FBO and hangar environment, without letting one obligation dilute the other.

Outcome

The result

Crownair’s FBO building and hangars were delivered alongside the City Operations Garage. The public garage obligation was met under prevailing wage; the private aviation program avoided an unnecessary wage classification that would have added more than $1 million in labor cost. The finished campus reflects both sides of that result: facilities that work for aviation operations, and a delivery strategy that protected the project’s economics.

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