Port Creates Panel on Airport Runway Issue

Lending its stamp of approval Tuesday to efforts to improve the view of pilots landing at Lindbergh Field, the Board of Port Commissioners created an ad hoc committee to meet with city officials about a six-story building that pilots call “an accident waiting to happen.”

But the move was a mere formality since the three-man “committee” of Louis Wolfsheimer, William Rick and W. Daniel Larsen had already decided to meet with City Councilman Ron Roberts to discuss the Laurel Travel Center, a parking garage that sits 710 feet from the east end of the runway.

Still, the board went ahead with the show of support for the three.

“Anybody that looks at that thing knows it is a danger,” said Wolfsheimer, who will meet with Rick, Larsen and Roberts on Friday. “We can now go in there at the behest of our fellow commissioners.”

The parking garage has been at the center of controversy since its construction in 1986 but has come under even more heated attack after three Federal Aviation Administration studies of the building concluded that it is not a hazard to pilots.

The latest study, completed in July, deemed that the building was an obstruction, and it recommended that the airport install a sophisticated warning-light system in the runway by November.

Still, Wolfsheimer and others opposing the building were not satisfied.

“Somehow, in their own minds, the FAA made their study come out nice,” Wolfsheimer said.

Referring to construction of the building, board chairman Raymond W. Burk said: “We have to make sure that this kind of thing never happens again.”

The committee and Roberts will discuss the options of lowering the building or removing it altogether.