Carisa Lee

The Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) de­fend­ed its de­ci­sion to serve a No­tice to Quit to the Ch­aguara­mas Mil­i­tary His­to­ry and Aero­space Mu­se­um, say­ing it had ex­haust­ed all ef­forts to for­malise the mu­se­um’s ten­an­cy. The Au­thor­i­ty said it spent more than 30 years at­tempt­ing to reg­u­larise the mu­se­um’s oc­cu­pa­tion, but “all such ef­forts have been re­ject­ed by the man­age­ment of the Mu­se­um.” It ar­gued that it had no choice but to act in the pub­lic in­ter­est to en­sure “eq­ui­table and law­ful use of state re­sources.”

Mu­se­um Di­rec­tor Lin­da Kelshall, in an in­ter­view on Thurs­day said there's been lit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­ceiv­ing the lat­est evic­tion no­tice. “Up to now, I haven’t heard any­thing about it, noth­ing at all,” she said. De­spite a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 1, 2024, in which the CDA with­drew a 30-year lease of­fer, Kelshall and her team said they had not re­ceived a sub­stan­tive re­sponse to their le­gal at­tempts to en­gage the Au­thor­i­ty. The CDA main­tained that in the last four years, Kelshall failed to re­spond mean­ing­ful­ly and con­tin­ued op­er­at­ing on state land with­out pay­ing rent.

Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Kathy-Ann Ed­wards urged the CDA to meet with mu­se­um rep­re­sen­ta­tives to find a com­pro­mise be­fore en­force­ment ac­tion is tak­en. Both she and Kelshall said they hoped their at­tor­neys would have more suc­cess in mak­ing con­tact.

The Na­tion­al Trust ac­knowl­edged con­cerns over the mu­se­um’s im­pend­ing clo­sure but re­frained from com­ment­ing on the le­gal dis­pute. Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment and Mar­ket­ing Co­or­di­na­tor Graeme Suite stressed the site's his­tor­i­cal val­ue, call­ing its arte­facts "very im­por­tant mark­ers of mil­i­tary and cul­tur­al her­itage in the coun­try." He said that while re­lo­ca­tion could be an op­tion, preser­va­tion should be a pri­or­i­ty. The Trust ex­pressed its will­ing­ness to as­sist in re­solv­ing the mat­ter in the coun­try’s best in­ter­est.