L.A. to Fund Upgrades Near LAX

In a highly unusual bid to placate residents near Los Angeles International Airport, the city has agreed to pay $499.5 million to ease noise, air pollution and traffic in their neighborhoods.

In exchange, a 22-member coalition of religious, environmental and labor groups and the Inglewood and Lennox school districts have promised not to sue Los Angeles over the $11-billion plan to modernize LAX.

The unprecedented pact will be announced next week and still requires the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval. The money would be spent over the next 11 to 16 years to soundproof hundreds of homes and schools, set up job-training programs and conduct studies on noise, health and air quality.

In the Inglewood and Lennox schools, the money would allow officials to restore windows that for years have been covered to cut down on noise.

Airport officials estimate the accord would cost up to $270 million for items provided to the coalition, $118.5 million for the Inglewood Unified School District and $111 million for the Lennox School District.

The city would pay for the improvements through a combination of bonds, airport reserves, passenger charges and higher landing fees and terminal rents for airlines.

Other airport agencies, including those in Boston and Denver, have negotiated deals with adjacent neighborhoods and municipalities to compensate for airport modernization plans, but none are as wide-ranging and expensive as the LAX agreement.

In Boston, for example, the agency that operates Logan International Airport has spent $41.6 million on community projects.

“This agreement is really revolutionary,” said Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza, policy director for Environmental Defense and one of the coalition’s organizers. “There are so many of us with such different perspectives and constituencies, but we’ve managed to stay together through a long and difficult process.”

The Los Angeles airport agreement, which took almost 10 months to negotiate, is one of several bids underway by city officials to sway opponents of Mayor James K. Hahn’s controversial LAX plan.

To head off a possible lawsuit, Los Angeles officials are in talks with El Segundo to craft a deal that would limit growth at LAX to 78 million annual passengers. That effort may run afoul of federal law, which prohibits airports from constraining capacity.

Officials are also discussing extending an existing pact with the city of Inglewood to provide millions in additional funding for sound insulation and land acquisition.

City officials and the LAX Coalition for Economic, Environmental & Educational Justice hailed the airport agreement as a significant departure from the often confrontational and emotional relationship between low-income minority communities to the east of LAX and the 75-year-old airport.

“We feel very strongly that this is what we should be doing,” said Kim Day, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that runs the airport. “We weren’t railroaded into coming up with an agreement to keep people from suing us. We know we cause environmental problems, and we think we should be allowed by the FAA to spend money to make these people’s lives better.”

But even as the coalition and the city’s airport agency prepared to announce the pact, it was far from clear if the plan would be blessed by federal officials.

The FAA must approve any deal that requires the airport agency to spend its revenue, which is separate from the city’s general fund, on projects off airport grounds.

Federal law requires that airports that accept federal grants must prove to the FAA that airport revenues will be spent on projects that are directly tied to airport operations.

“We are going to look at this carefully and see if it just can’t work for everyone involved,” said Donn Walker, an FAA spokesman. “We want to do what’s right for the airport. We want to do what’s right for the community. And we want to do what’s right by federal practice and law.”

The groups met with FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey in Washington, D.C., last week. Blakey is “particularly impressed with the level of collaboration between the airport and the communities,” and thinks the pact “sends a strong signal to other communities that this is a healthy way to do business,” said Greg Martin, an FAA spokesman.

Those who negotiated the deal say they believe the accord could become a model for other airports.

That is what the airlines are worried about. They would have to shoulder part of the cost through higher landing fees and terminal rents at a time when many airlines already are struggling financially.

Airline representatives said they could not comment on the deal because they haven’t seen it.

“What may be problematic, and we just don’t know at this point, is No. 1, where this $500 million will come from, and whether the FAA will authorize it,” said Doug Wills, a spokesman for the Air Transport Assn., an airline trade group.

The City Council, which signed off on the overall airport modernization plan in a 12-3 vote Oct. 20, is scheduled to take two more votes, on Tuesday and Dec. 14.

Airport officials hope to begin construction next year.

Negotiations on the side agreement with the coalition began in March. Airport officials and community representatives sat down with a 120-item list to begin what they said was an arduous and time-consuming, but cordial, process. They whittled the list to 70 items, doing away with such wishes as a skate park and a sheriff’s station -- projects the FAA was likely to reject because they cannot clearly be tied to airport operations.

The Los Angeles airport accord is based on the efforts of the nonprofit Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy to negotiate “community benefits agreements” between private developers and residents. Such accords have been reached over Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, the 22-acre NoHo Commons in North Hollywood and the Hollywood and Highland retail and entertainment complex.

The Staples agreement cost $70 million -- about one-seventh the cost of the airport agreement.

The airport pact, which comprises three separate agreements, includes a bevy of measures aimed at improving the quality of life for airport-area residents. Officials, who are still finalizing the contracts, hope to sign the final deal by Dec. 14.

Under the pact, the city’s airport agency would provide a minimum of $4.275 million a year to the city of Inglewood and a similar amount to Los Angeles County to soundproof homes that are most affected by airport noise. In some areas, the new program would include residences at the end of blocks that were excluded from previous noise-abatement efforts.

“We’re right under the flight path, and in the previous agreement, they would do a house at 8901, but wouldn’t soundproof the house that’s right across the street from it at 8900,” said James Harris, a South Los Angeles resident and chairman of the Southwest Neighborhood Council.

The accord would provide additional funds to soundproof and to install air-conditioning and air-filtration systems in schools in Inglewood and Lennox. And it would provide job training and apprenticeship opportunities for airport-area residents, and require airport officials to ensure that contractors give priority to these residents when hiring.

The airport agency would also conduct a series of studies, according to the deal, to inventory air pollutants near the airport.

Construction companies doing work as part of the LAX modernization plan would also be required, under the agreement, to comply with a variety of restrictions, including keeping equipment away from residential streets.

“In Lennox, we wanted to keep trucks from going through their neighborhoods,” said Danny Tabor, chairman of the Inglewood Coalition for Drug and Violence Prevention. “People already use their neighborhoods as a shortcut to the airport.”