OCEANSIDE -- A private company will take over operations of the Oceanside Municipal Airport next year in a deal that likely ensures a long future for the once hotly debated facility.

The City Council voted 4-1 Wednesday to approve a 50-year lease and operating agreement with Airport Property Ventures of Los Angeles.

Oceanside will get a minimum yearly rent payment and 40 percent of the airport's net income. Over the next 25 years, that should net the city about $11.3 million, a staff report states.

"It's pretty easy to approve this," Councilman Jack Feller said.

Not so for Councilwoman Esther Sanchez, who accused several colleagues of refusing to hear her concerns during a brief, but "very hostile," meeting last month behind closed doors.

"I'm not feeling good about this at all," said Sanchez, who cast the dissenting vote.

Debate has long swirled around the future of the single-runway airfield, home to about 65 small planes.

Pilots groups have spent thousands of dollars in recent elections to support candidates perceived as airport-friendly. Critics of the facility have said there may be a better use for the land, north of Highway 76 in the San Luis Rey River Valley. Last year the council agreed to look for a private company to run the facility.

Airport Property Ventures beat out two other applicants, American Airports Corp. of Santa Monica and CMTS of Culver City.

The city manager will finalize the lease after a maximum 90-day window in which the company can complete its inspections of the site.

The company has agreed to expand and renovate the airport over the next several years, starting with the south side.

First up is construction of 10 to 12 hangars on existing pads, Jack Driscoll, a principal with the company, said after the meeting. Replacement of some of dilapidated buildings will follow, he said.

It is not clear yet what will happen to the vacant 14.7 acres north of the airfield.

Rough plans call for the construction of 174,000 square feet of hangar space there. But for that to happen, the city would need to resolve an ownership dispute, a staff report states.

The city was put in a tough legal spot this year when a company called AELD LLC announced that it was exercising an option to buy back the vacant land. The company identified itself a successor to the Deutsch Co., which sold the property to Oceanside in 2003.

A condition of that deal was that Deutsch could buy back the land if the city failed to improve it for airport-related purposes within five years.

The Federal Aviation Administration has told the city it can't sell the land because it is "still needed for the aeronautical purposes for which it was acquired."

Contact staff writer Craig TenBroeck at (760) 901-4062 or ctenbroeck@nctimes.com.