By selling off the land for housing they're able to generate a large amount of funding for development of the rest of the airport facilities and reduce costs in the maintenance of those that were pretty much redundant, such as Runway 06/24.
Runway extension to 13/31 is now a possibility with the deal done on the land where the old factory stood by the threshold of 31. They've also recently installed brand new lighting systems and have many other plans on the horizon.
Agreed!. The selling of the land near Runway 06/24, is a positive thing - not negative. It will being more improvements and there is now a bigger chnace of runway expansion due to the sell off.