Once upon a time, airports were communities bound by a mutual passion for aviation. That's the way it was at Opa-Locka Executive Airport, a former U.S. Navy training field that during the 1960s became one of the busiest general aviation airports in the country. Those bright, buoyant days are passed, however.

Now the wrong passions have heated, and faction lines have hardened. Full-blown animus is afoot at the gritty South Florida field, and it's gotten personal as the contesting parties lawyer up and gird for battle. The overriding issue? "It's all about money," one operator in the middle of OPF's ongoing hostilities puts it. How much money? Lots.

The Miami-Dade County Airport and Seaport Committee meets once a month on Thursday mornings at 9:30 a.m. Present on April 16, 2009, was attorney Willie Gary, a famed trial lawyer whose victories in the courtroom (one of which, against Disney, brought in $240 million, according to a press release) provide him with the wherewithal to travel the world in a Boeing Business Jet named "Wings of Justice II."

On this day, Gary graciously sought a few moments of the committee's time in the interest of saving them some money. "These five minutes could save years of litigation," he said, along with "millions of dollars." His press release, issued later that day, upped the ante, citing "billion-dollar litigation."

Gary told committee chairman Dorrin De Rolle and the assembled commissioners, "Nobody needs this kind of fight" by way of informing them that a fight was what they would get. He was there representing his client, "Opa-Locka Flightline . . . the only African-American owned and operated FBO in the nation." He was there because his client was "not being treated fairly, plain and simple." Gary noted that if an airport receives federal funds, the law says there can be no discrimination. "We don't come seeking special privilege, but there should be no discrimination or favoritism, and that's the case we bring today," Gary said. "We must all operate under one set of rules."

One of the principals at Opa-Locka Flightline is Tony Robinson, an African-American who is justifiably proud of a successful career in aviation. Robinson has a print on his wall of a Red Tail P-51 Mustang signed by its pilot, Tuskegee Airman Lou Purnell. He fondly recalls pumping fuel for Butler Aviation during his younger days in the 1980s at Washington National Airport and schmoozing with the political luminaries of the time as they passed through the main portal to the nation's capital; he especially liked William Casey, head of the CIA. Now Robinson has been served with an eviction notice that could reverse everything he and his partners have worked toward, and he is angry.

There was a time when the anger at this airport was less focused, directed toward the county's Aviation Department and its staff, but in the more diffuse way that characterizes the average citizen's kvetching about the vagaries of local government. Then, in 2007, the county assigned a lease to an entity known as AA Acquisitions on more than 220 acres of airport property, almost all of it including the sites where a number of county tenants, all small-business firms, ply their trades. AA announced its development plan for an "Airside International Business Park," and it has hung colorful banners on the airport's perimeter fences depicting "offices," "retail" and "hangars."

With the transfer of the lease, all the former county tenants, like Opa-Locka Flightline, became tenants of AA, paying their rent to that company, which retains 15 percent to cover its costs as landlord and turns the remainder over to the county. The tenants have banded together in a determined effort to maintain the status quo and to continue doing business where they contend they had been thriving for years until AA came along. In the process, AA Acquisitions has come to be the focus of the community's growing fury.

No one will predict what the outcome will be, although Dan Woodruff, a property manager for AA Acquisitions and just nine months on the job, cheerfully takes visitors through a stack of artist's renderings of an airport with myriad color-coded structures depicting a future Opa-Locka. He is upbeat and optimistic.

In summarizing the situation, he says, "We want to negotiate long-term leases with [the current tenants]," but acknowledges that hasn't happened. He says development of the airport by AA has been held up pending the removal of various structures that impede the building of necessary infrastructure. While he declines to discuss cases that are currently in the courts, he is quite aware of the makeup of the airport's current spectrum of commerce, which ranges from FBOs to flight training to repair stations and aircraft dismantling and salvage operations.