CAMARILLO : County Board to Consider Airport Plan

The Board of Supervisors will consider later this month whether to approve an agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration to build a permanent air traffic control tower at Camarillo Airport.

The permanent tower would replace a 37-foot-high temporary tower erected at the airport last year.

The agreement, which would give the county a 40-year lease on the new control tower when it is completed, is necessary because the FAA is providing the $1.5 million needed to build the six-story structure. The supervisors will consider the agreement July 24.

“It’s long overdue,” said James G. O’Neill, the airport administrator.

The county has been seeking federal money for an air traffic control tower since 1982, when the annual number of landings and takeoffs at the county-owned airport first exceeded 200,000, O’Neill said. The FAA requires control towers at airports where operations exceed that number, he said.

Last year, about 210,000 flights began or ended at the airport, airport spokesman Jeff McCaullay said.

If the lease agreement is approved, construction on the permanent tower would begin in November, with work ending in May, 1992, McCaullay said.

“It’s not soon enough,” he said. “Getting that brand new tower is like a windfall to us.”

The airport’s three air traffic controllers now work in a cramped room supported by two large shipping crates. Controllers sitting in the glass-enclosed structure have a full view from three sides and a partial view from the fourth side, O’Neill said.

“It’s a no-frills tower and was never meant to be permanent,” he said.

The new tower will include office space, an elevator, restrooms and drinking fountains, O’Neill said. Controllers must now walk about 75 yards to the nearest restroom facility, he said.