Airport Inn owner puts Boise on notice of potential lawsuit, alleging ‘unlawful’ eviction
For months, Reinard Pollmann has been fighting Boise’s eviction of his business at the Airport Inn.
The city vacated the hotel, at 2660 W. Airport Way, in February after Boise police connected the property with calls for emergency services, including for drug overdoses, suspected drug sales and violent crime, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.
Since March, Pollmann has been appealing the city’s order for eviction, arguing that the city should have given him more time to correct the problems it identified at the property and calling the city’s evidence of drug use into question, according to court records.
Now, he’s added another line of attack. In a tort claim filed Aug. 13, obtained by the Statesman through a public records request, he accused the city of evicting him, without compensation, from a property upon which he had invested “vast” amounts of time, money and effort.
“There remains the outstanding question of restitution/fair compensation due to Mr. Pollmann from the city … due to the city’s instant windfall in the form of buildings and other property improvements,” the claim reads.
Jennifer Kronberg, a spokesperson for the Boise Airport, declined to comment on potential litigation. Pollmann’s former attorney, Angelo Rosa, wrote the claim in mid-August but told the Statesman in a Sep. 10 email that he was no longer representing Pollmann. He declined to comment for the story.
Rosa estimates in the claim that Pollmann’s improvements and additions to the property are worth up to $4 million, and that Pollman is owed the “fair market value” of the property. Pollmann privately owns the Airport Inn, but he was leasing the land on which the hotel sits from the Boise Airport.
For businesses on airport property, the Boise Airport “essentially acts as a landlord,” airport spokesperson Shawna Samuelson previously told the Statesman. Pollmann has been leasing the land from the city since 2018, Kronberg told the Statesman in an email.
In the claim, Rosa argued that, with its eviction notice, the city had engaged in an “unlawful taking without just compensation” and an “abuse of process” to “gain quick control” of the property, which resulted in “the unjust enrichment of the city at Mr. Pollmann’s expense.”
Police connected Airport Inn to drug use
Kronberg declined to comment on the status of or future plans for the Airport Inn building.
When the city ordered employees and residents of the Airport Inn to leave, it gave a similar notice to the nearby Rodeway Inn. Both businesses were given three days to vacate and surrender the properties.
Pollmann had fallen behind on rent payments to the city, the Statesman reported, but the city decided to vacate the business when Boise police connected the Airport Inn to a 400% increase in calls for emergency services over the past year, Samuelson told the Statesman in February.
Si Banga, the manager of the Rodeway Inn, told the Stateman in February that he was surprised by the city’s allegation that his hotel was the site of illegal drug activity. He said the Rodeway Inn was being unfairly associated with activity at the Airport Inn.
Banga did not reply to a phone call requesting comment for this story.
Rachel Church, a co-manager at the Airport Inn, told the Statesman in February that there was some drug activity at the hotel, but that some of the hotel’s staff and long-term residents had been working unsuccessfully to “clean up” the place.
“A lot of them are struggling,” she said of the hotel’s employees.
Pollmann’s tort claim did not directly counter the city’s allegations about drug use on the property, but said the city’s eviction process was “procedurally inappropriate” and “unlawful.”
Rosa argued that the eviction was part of a “broad and systemic campaign to deprive Mr. Pollmann and other ground lessees of the value they (like Mr. Pollmann) have invested into these properties for the sake of expanding the city’s operational footprint around Boise Airport.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
