Action Expected to Benefit County’s Economy : Business Welcomes Added Flights at Wayne

Orange County businessmen, who as a group have long supported expansion of the county’s only commercial airport, generally voiced approval Thursday of county supervisors’ decision to raise by 34% the number of jet flights permitted at John Wayne Airport.

The county plan, which enables three new airlines to begin serving Orange County and will allow 55 daily commercial jet departures from the airport, up from 41, was praised by several business leaders as a significant step in improving the county’s business climate by making air transportation a little more available.

But opinions were divided on just how great an impact the airport expansion will have on the growth of the county’s business community.

And one prominent businessman and transportation system critic, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. Chairman Walter Gerkin, reiterated his belief that the county’s air transportation needs won’t be adequately addressed unless supervisors decide to develop a new commercial airport site.

None of the various private transportation and business development groups in the county have done their own economic study of airport expansion, but an economic impact report prepared for the county last year said that the addition of 14 new flights at John Wayne Airport will create 4,000 new full-time jobs in the county and add nearly a third of a billion dollars annually in income for the county’s economy.

Tourism Boost

The report said the new flights, especially those to important business centers like Chicago, will bring more tourists, business travelers and conventioneers directly into the county, creating jobs in the tourist services industry as well as in the airport and transportation fields.

Todd Nicholson, executive director of the Industrial League of Orange County, said Thursday that he believes the added new flights and terminal and parking improvements at the airport also will “have a positive economic impact both for companies that already are here and for companies that might be looking in the future to locate or expand here. The sheer convenience of the new terminal, as we understand the plan, is going to be a tremendous boost to businesses and individuals who utilize the facility on a regular basis,” he said.

Nicholson said that the airport improvements will make it increasingly attractive for companies to redevelop existing commercial and industrial areas immediately around the airport--something that already is being done--and “also will be very much of a benefit to (commercial and industrial) development in inland cities as well.”

But Jerry Collins, director of corporate communications for the Irvine Co., said officials of the giant land development firm believe it is “very questionable” whether expansion of the airport will result in commercial development beyond what is now projected in the county.

“Certainly, in terms of office development, having an airport nearby--whatever its size--is convenient, but it isn’t essential,” Collins said. “The fact is, across the nation, most central business districts are located some distance from an airport.”

Collins said that Irvine Co. officials believe the present crowded conditions at John Wayne Airport are “intolerable” and that the new county plan will help correct the crowding.

“But we don’t think a larger airport with improved passenger facilities is really going to make much difference as far as the rate and scale of growth in Orange County, or in the airport vicinity, are concerned. The growth would occur anyway. It (already) has been occurring with a grossly inadequate airport,” he said.

“We have a dynamic county economy, and the airport situation has had very little to do with that. The airport--any airport--doesn’t spur growth all that much; it serves it,” Collins said. Collins also said that company officials are “still a little concerned about how the adopted plan will affect surface transportation around the airport.”

Joseph E. Irvine, executive director of the Community Airport Council, a business-backed organization formed in 1974 to lobby for expansion of the airport, said his group “is pleased” with the expansion plan but hopes supervisors will act within the next decade to boost the allowable flights even higher, to the maximum of 73 established in the new airport general plan.

‘Short-Term Gains’

The expansion approved Wednesday, he said, “provides short-term gains that will be helpful to business, but is not going to solve all of the county’s transportation problems.”

Pacific Mutual Chairman Gerkin, however, said that he currently does not believe it practical to increase flights at John Wayne Airport beyond 55 departures a day.

Gerkin, who is an officer of the private Orange County Transportation Coalition and was a member of the county’s airport site selection committee--which has twice recommended construction of a second airport--said that John Wayne Airport “has been a zoo for the last few years,” but added that he does not believe the expansion plan approved Wednesday “will have enormous impact on the business community.