Ventura County Polarized Over Upgrading of Airports for Jets

Skywest Airlines employee Barbara Ranum answers the phone, writes tickets, loads baggage, screens passengers for weapons and occasionally goes out on the Tarmac to guide the carrier’s 17- and 19-passenger commuter planes to the passenger terminal at the Oxnard Airport.

In rapidly growing Ventura County, Skywest and Resort Commuter Airlines provide the only scheduled commercial air service, with each firm offering four flights a day, mostly to Los Angeles International Airport and Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.

Residents take credit for keeping larger airlines out of Ventura County by threatening elected officials with a civil war should commercial jets be allowed.

Elected officials and noise-sensitive residents have maintained their opposition to commercial jets at either of the county’s two airports in Oxnard and Camarillo. But some in the business community and tourist industry here are planning to study countywide demand for scheduled jet service that they say will eventually link Ventura County with the rest of the world.

‘Static Situation’

“We have a static situation, a Mexican standoff. No one wants to make a move, especially politicians,” said Scott Bollinger, a member of the Oxnard Inter-Neighborhood Council, a coalition of homeowners’ groups that have battled with officials over the noise from the mostly small, private planes that use the Oxnard Airport.

Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn, as well as his four colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, agree that the existing political climate in the county “simply would not allow scheduled jet airline service.”

However, the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., a coalition of oil, real estate, manufacturing, tourism and agricultural interests, has raised about half of the $35,000 to $40,000 needed to hire a Sacramento-based lobbyist and conduct a comprehensive market study of demand for jet service, said association member Dick Fausset, who works for the Thousand Oaks Land and Development Corp.

“It’s incredible that a county of 600,000 people, with a major hotel industry and significant business and industrial development, is forced to depend on a freeway system,” Fausset said.

New Airport an Option

If the study can show that the county would be well-served by commercial jet service, then, Fausset said, the group would look closely at putting a regional airport somewhere in the Oxnard Plain, a wide agricultural expanse bounded by Point Mugu, Camarillo and Oxnard. Ideally, Fausset said, a new airport would be build adjacent to the Naval Air Station at Point Mugu.

There are formidable obstacles to that plan. In addition to the local opposition, the Navy has long been opposed to sharing air space at its Pacific Missile Test Center at Point Mugu. Nevertheless, the business group has begun a series of meetings with state officials and a Sacramento lobbyist, Fausset said.

The group is considering sharing an airport with the Point Mugu air station; expansion of the Oxnard or Camarillo airports, and construction of a new airport, said Robert D. Kahn, a research and marketing specialist who Fausset said will likely be hired to conduct the airport study.

“There is a real visceral sense in the county from government, developers, the tourist community, that it is a good idea,” Kahn said. “But you have to have some kind of factual research. I think we could have a study done in three or four months.”

In the case of either a new airport or the upgrading of one of the county’s existing airports to provide jet service, the plan’s approval and funding would take years, involving local, county, state and federal governments, officials say.

Meanwhile, county officials are considering a 20-year master plan for the Camarillo Airport that earmarks $36 million in improvements to the former Air Force facility. News of it has rekindled fears among city residents that the planned construction of a control tower and a 10,000-square-foot terminal and installation of sophisticated navigational devices signify future commercial jet service.

“It’s not hysteria,” said Camarillo Mayor Sandi Bush, “it’s just common sense.”

Bush, who opposes any commercial jet service in her city, conceded that the 735-acre Camarillo Airport, with its proximity to the Ventura Freeway, its reinforced, 9,000-foot-long runway and its location (it is surrounded by largely open agricultural land) is the logical choice for a regional airport.

The improvements would increase air safety for the private airplanes that the plan predicts will triple in number at the Camarillo Airport in the next 20 years. Now, pilots must rely on visual and radio communication when they land at Camarillo instead of control-tower direction, said small-craft pilot Marc Cohen of Studio City.

“You have a lot of airplanes out here because the flight paths of Point Mugu, Oxnard and Camarillo are practically on top of each other,” Cohen said.

Bush and Camarillo City Councilman F.B. (Bill) Esty, who are local members of the five-member Camarillo Airport Authority, unsuccessfully opposed the airport master plan in a vote last month. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors will probably vote on the plan in December, after a review of the plan’s environmental effects.

Policy Now Limits Service

The board’s existing policy, adopted in 1982, permits general aviation traffic at both Ventura County airports and allows small-plane commuter service as well at Oxnard. The board agreed to “abandon any further study for providing facilities to accommodate scheduled jet service at either airport.”

James G. O’Neill, the county’s airports administrator, said the policy came out of public hearings five years ago, when the county was considering commercial jet service at one of its airports. “We first looked at a so-called Santa Barbara Airport-sized operation, but it was obvious that the opposition was overwhelming,” he said.

“Our cities have been recruiting companies; hotel and convention facilities have 1,200 rooms and another 1,400 on the drawing boards; business people are saying that they cannot move their people and products in and out of the county. . . . My position as a planner is that an improved level of service is inevitable,” O’Neill said. “I also realize the political sensitivity of this issue.”

All this talk about airport expansions and long-range studies makes Camarillo resident Thomas Rush nervous.

Mobilizing Opposition

Rush, president of the Assn. of Camarillo Residents, is mobilizing those in Camarillo who oppose the noise, air pollution and hazards that he said would accompany commercial jet service at the Camarillo Airport.

“The only reason that they would put in a control tower, a passenger terminal and more hangar and repair facilities is for the development of a regional, commercial airport,” Rush said. “We all know what John Wayne and Burbank airports are like. We know that we don’t want that here.”

Although the 1982 agreement between the county and Camarillo that created a local airport policy board also specifically prohibited commercial use of the airport, Rush pointed out that a 4-1 vote of the Board of Supervisors could change that policy and overrule the Camarillo Airport Authority.

Ventura County Supervisor Edwin A. Jones, whose 2nd District includes the Camarillo Airport and most of the area now being considered by county business interests for a regional airport, said any plans for commercial jet service would require election of a new Board of Supervisors.

“The 5% or so of people who need to fly on a regular basis can well afford to take the time to go to Burbank or LAX to make their flights,” Jones said.

Need Is Emphasized

But the estimated one to two hours required to drive to either the Los Angeles, Burbank or Santa Barbara airports constitutes one of the great obstacles to Ventura County’s becoming a major tourist and convention destination, said Russ Smith, director of the Ventura Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

Growth in that city’s estimated $35-million-a-year tourist trade will depend on attracting visitors from outside Southern California, he said.

“For us to do that, we need an improved air-delivery service,” Smith said.

Jack Stewart, Oxnard’s economic development director, said his city has already contributed $5,000 toward the private airport study. But he said it is unlikely that Oxnard would be the site for commercial jet service.

Fraught With Difficulties

Expanding the Oxnard Airport to accommodate commercial jet service would require an expensive extension of the runway over a major four-lane street, he said. In addition, Stewart and others say that development surrounding the Oxnard Airport, including new homes, a high school and a library, would make expansion there almost impossible.

Whether or not commercial airlines would come to a regional airport in Ventura County if one were built is debatable.

PSA spokesman Bill Hastings said Ventura County is only one of 50 markets in the western United States that is being considered for future service. “There will be some expansion of our services, but out of 50 cities, we will probably only be moving into maybe 10 over the next few years,” he said.

“Ventura County is of long-term interest to us, something perhaps in the next five to 10 years,” Hastings said.

Planners at the Southern California Assn. of Governments predict that by 1995, Ventura County will generate about 3.7 million air passengers annually, contrasted with forecasts of 34.4 million in Los Angeles County and 12.4 million in Orange County. But both SCAG and the California Department of Transportation are now updating those numbers, now about 6 years old.

Members of the county economic development association hope to furnish their own numbers as they start lobbying Thursday at an Ojai meeting of local officials and business groups. The group is planning to request contributions for the private airport study from cities throughout the county later this fall, Fausset said.

“I’m convinced that when people look at the merits, that there is a chance for a change of attitude,” Fausset said. “But obviously, there may be a lot of people in the county who are opposed.”