The City of Brewton has an option on 58 acres of land adjacent to the Brewton Municipal Airport, land that officials said could be used for industrial development in the future.

That land, coupled with another 20 acres the city owns, could be prime real estate for economic development, Mayor Yank Lovelace said.

The city will have the option on the property from T.R. Miller Mill Co. through April 30, 2016, and the purchase price on the property is $290,000, city attorney Ed Hines told council members Tuesday.

“There has been a good bit of effort by the airport committee and the city council on economic development opportunities,” Lovelace said. “We will soon be listing the properties with the state of Alabama, hoping to attract interest to the airport.”

The airport committee had looked into expanding its relationship with the military, which already has a contract to do touch-and-go landings at the Brewton Airport.

City officials had hoped to be able to expand that service on weekends by having pilots land and tie down their aircraft in Brewton ó something U.S. Navy pilots now do at the Pensacola airport.

But airport manager Earl Lambert said Brewton’s airport simply does not have the security level or resources to handle those aircraft.

“The Navy requires planes tied down to be in a secure location that has TSA standards,” Lambert said. “They also require any scheduled takeoff and landing to have crash resources. That would be a problem for us 24 hours a day.”

In other business, the council spent 40 minutes in executive session to discuss the good name and character of a city employee who was not specified.

After the executive session, the council adjourned on a motion by Councilman Frank Cotten.

A crowd of residents waited during the meeting and the executive session.