City officials criticize draft report on proposed new terminal at Hollywood Burbank Airport

With time winding down for the public to provide input and questions on the draft environmental impact report on Hollywood Burbank Airport’s proposed 14-gate replacement terminal, members of the Burbank City Council put in their two cents on the document.

During a meeting on Tuesday, council members unanimously approved sending a 36-page letter to the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, criticizing the various shortcomings in the 3,700-page draft report that looked into the possible impacts of building a new 355,000-square-foot terminal on the northeast quadrant of the airfield known as the B-6 parcel.

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The report also analyzed the effects of two other options — building a 355,000-square-foot terminal or a 232,000-square-foot, 14-gate terminal in the southwest corner of the property.

The airport authority will accept comments and questions from the public until 11:59 p.m. on Monday.

The city’s letter includes 98 comments over 10 different sections of the draft report. The most heavily criticized section was regarding traffic, in which 26 comments were made.

For example, the letter claims that airport officials did not thoroughly provide information on how many passengers and airport employees will be traveling to and from the airfield.

Additionally, the city claims that the draft report did not adequately explain how the traffic statistics were obtained.

Because the airport is proposing to build the terminal in a new location, the presumed traffic would move with it. However, the city stated that the draft report did not sufficiently explain how the traffic would change if the terminal was in a different section of the airfield.

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The city’s letter also claims that the draft report provided a “very conservative and misleading” estimate of the level of service, or how impacted a street becomes, in the future.

According to the draft report, it projects that traffic at the intersection of Hollywood Way and Winona Avenue would “increase nearly 100% between 2016 and 2025.”

“This is questionable, as no arterial intersection in the city has ever experienced traffic growth of this magnitude in less than 10 years,” the letter states.

Council members agreed that many questions needed to be answered by the airport authority to have a properly vetted document.

Councilman David Gordon took it upon himself to read off many of the comments made in the letter during the meeting, which did not sit well with some of his colleagues.

“I thought you were reading a statement or a speech or a letter of your own, [but] then you’re reading this material that we’ve all had for a week, that all of us have read,” Vice Mayor Will Rogers said. “You condemn all the unanswered questions and then read from the sheet that is asking those very questions.”

Gordon replied: “It’s important that the public understand how grievously lacking this document has been prepared, on a project that [is supposed] to last for a generation or more [that has used] millions and millions of tax payer dollars, [that has] been rushed through.”

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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpio

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