Council Decides Border Airport Is Best Option : Growth: The ‘TwinPorts’ plan is endorsed in a 6-2 vote, although it faces formidable obstacles and would virtually halt residential development on Otay Mesa.

In its strongest endorsement to date of a proposed binational airport straddling Otay Mesa and Tijuana, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday declared the plan the city’s preferred long-range airport option and moved toward blocking most residential development in the area.

By a 6-2 vote, the council narrowed the 2-decade-old debate over the future of Lindbergh Field to Councilman Ron Roberts’ so-called “TwinPorts” proposal to build an international airport on Otay Mesa that would share runways and a control tower with Tijuana’s existing airport.

Although formidable obstacles remain--notably, the approval of the U.S. and Mexican governments, identifying funding for the estimated $1.5-billion-plus cost and a host of thorny logistic questions--the plan’s supporters hailed Tuesday’s action as a significant step toward a facility they estimate could operate by the turn of the century.

“This focuses our efforts and puts us on a path in a much more direct way than ever before,” Roberts said after the meeting. “It moves an argument that came from a small group of people to the forefront of where the city should be going.”

The council’s action, which strengthened a resolution approved earlier this month, also gave Roberts and Mayor Maureen O’Connor more to carry with them to Mexico City for scheduled meetings today with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and other top Mexican officials.

At those meetings, O’Connor and Roberts hope to receive the Mexican officials’ blessing for feasibility studies on the proposed airport, which, in turn, could enhance the San Diegans’ negotiating leverage as they begin the lengthy process of seeking local and federal government backing for the plan.

Under the TwinPorts proposal, a 12,000-foot runway and terminals would be built on the U.S. side of the border, next to Tijuana’s international airport. Linked by a taxiway connecting the two parallel runways, the dual airports would operate separate arrival and departure terminals, customs checkpoints, immigration, agriculture and other inspection facilities.

If the TwinPorts plan were enacted, Lindbergh Field would remain open, operating at roughly its present capacity, primarily as a short-haul and commuter service airport, according to city officials. Brown Field, a small city-owned airport on Otay Mesa, would be closed and its operations shifted to the new border airport, or, perhaps, to Montgomery Field in Kearny Mesa.

Although its advocates describe the TwinPorts plan as the most viable answer to a much-debated question that has been a staple of San Diego’s political agenda since the 1960s, opponents argue that it faces unsolvable political and practical problems.

By exploring only that option to the exclusion of others, they warn, the city not only will lose years of valuable time in addressing its airport needs, but also in the process will disrupt long-range plans for residential and industrial development in Otay Mesa.

“It seems premature and foolish to fall in line behind an idea that has not really been evaluated,” said Councilman Bob Filner, who was joined by Councilwoman Judy McCarty in opposing Tuesday’s action. “By the time this thing falls flat, we’ll have wasted another five or 10 years and imposed some very severe economic hardships on people.”

Filner, whose district includes Otay Mesa, complained that the proposed airport not only would create severe noise, traffic and other problems for existing residents there, but also would largely preclude plans calling for up to 18,000 housing units and industrial development in the area.

To preserve the city’s options, Roberts and others have suggested that the council adopt land-use restrictions prohibiting the kind of interim development in the border region that could pose later obstacles to the airport.

City attorneys, however, have advised the council that it could accomplish that goal without imposing a moratorium on residential development.

Noting that the city has not yet approved any residential permits for Otay Mesa, the council could simply deny or defer action on any such proposals pending a determination on whether the TwinPorts airport will be built, city attorneys said.

Though Filner characterized the council’s action as “a de facto moratorium” on residential development on Otay Mesa, Roberts and other city officials argued that some home construction conceivably could occur in certain areas north of Otay Mesa Road that fall outside so-called noise contour lines related to the proposed binational airport.

Dismissing that argument as a “dishonest, phony smoke screen,” Filner predicted that the council’s action Tuesday will ensure that virtually no residential development occurs on Otay Mesa so long as the airport plan is being reviewed.

And, if the airport is eventually built, the long-range plans calling for thousands of affordable housing units in the border area will effectively be scuttled, Filner argued.

“They’re trying to make it look like we can have it all--an airport and some housing--but that isn’t going to happen,” Filner said. “They’re just afraid to admit it. In the meantime, no housing is built, and opportunities that won’t return are lost.”

Filner was particularly incensed that officials of the San Diego Assn. of Governments, the regional local government body that must approve the airport plan, were unable Tuesday to specify a timetable for the forthcoming feasibility studies.

“For three years, we’ve constantly been told that we’re going to get the answers in another 30 or 60 or 90 days,” Filner said. “This is an endless process . . . going nowhere. They keep coming up with different answers so it looks like progress is being made.”

By its action Tuesday, the council directed city planners to return next month with a report on how development proposals on or near the proposed airport site will be handled pending a final decision on its feasibility.

Tuesday’s debate’s also produced another point that critics of the TwinPorts plan probably will use in their effort to defeat it.

Under sharp, often caustic questioning from Filner, Ron Ahlfeldt of P&D; Technologies, an Orange-based firm retained by the city to study the plan, acknowledged that the proposed parallel alignment of the dual runways would require planes to approach from the east with a 3.4-degree “glide slope”--higher than Lindbergh’s oft-criticized 3.22-degree slope.

However, by rotating the runway on the American side of the border by 12 degrees, the 3-degree slope that aviation experts consider ideal for instrument landings could be achieved, Ahlfeldt said.

That explanation, however, left Filner and other skeptics unconvinced.

“We want to build a safer airport,” Filner said. “With all its other problems, I’m not sure this plan would even do that.”