LAX Neighbors Hail New Start for Expansion Project

A year ago, El Segundo Mayor Kelly McDowell stood before the Los Angeles City Council as it was poised to approve a massive overhaul of Los Angeles International Airport and threatened to sue if the city didn’t agree to slow growth at the airport.

On Thursday, McDowell, whose city borders the airport and was one of three that challenged the $11-billion plan in court, stood with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other airport-area representatives and hailed a deal to dismiss the lawsuit.

In exchange, Los Angeles agreed to shelve former Mayor James K. Hahn’s controversial plan to rework LAX, and to develop an alternative that focuses on improving security and updating the airport’s terminals.

“This is such a better result than we would have had in a courtroom,” McDowell said, after a standing-room-only news conference at LAX. “And it costs less and takes less time.”

At the lighthearted event, residents hugged and mugged for photos with Los Angeles city lawyers who just months ago they wouldn’t have greeted by name. Representatives of airport-area communities kidded about being on their third mayor of Los Angeles -- Richard Riordan and Hahn both devised plans for LAX that were despised by the airport’s neighbors.

And politicians who have criticized the city for failing to devise a politically palatable plan for LAX were smiling.

“I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be for something,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), as she hugged a beaming Villaraigosa. “Most of the time, I’m seen in these press conferences fighting somebody. This is a first for me.”

Villaraigosa was also praised by leaders from Inglewood and Culver City, Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) and airport-area residents for bringing the groups together and asking them to reach a compromise.

The mayor ended his remarks saying, “I’ll take responsibility for what goes wrong; that’s what happens when you’re chief executive of the city. But nothing’s going to go wrong.”

The lawsuit settlement allows construction to begin early next year on the south runway complex, which federal officials consider essential to cut down on close calls between aircraft. It also frees airport officials to start work on an overhaul of the Tom Bradley International Terminal and to install explosives-detection machines in the facility’s baggage system.

It almost certainly means the end for a check-in center near the San Diego Freeway. Other projects, including a new terminal on the airport’s western edge, will be reconsidered.

Airport officials also will try to limit growth at LAX, according to the agreement, by decreasing the number of gates where airplanes park. And the settlement also provides money to soundproof homes and to ease traffic and air pollution.

The agreement must be ratified by the city and county of Los Angeles, Inglewood, El Segundo, Culver City, the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Airport-area representatives urged Villaraigosa to take advantage of the momentum and start improving LAX immediately.

“Almost three years ago the Rand Corp. suggested the No. 1 problem we might have here in the short term is from vehicle bombs,” said Harman, who commissioned the Rand study. “Rand has been rehired ... and their report will be done the end of January. It’s my hope that Feb. 1 is Day 1 of construction to put either shatterproof or nonbreakable glass in all of these airport terminals.”