City Approaching Crossroads on Site for a New Airport : Transportation: Economics, noise, congestion are driving forces in finding Lindbergh Field replacement.

Fourteen years ago, Nancy Palmtag thought that she and her neighbors were on the verge of pushing Lindbergh Field out of business.

Fed up with the constant stream of jetliners skimming their rooftops and rattling their cupboards, Palmtag and several hundred others formed the United Agency for Fair Treatment with the sole purpose of moving the airport.

But eventually, like many such movements during the previous two decades, the effort fizzled.

“We wanted to believe that we could build on what has happened in the past and we felt that it was a necessary thing to happen,” Palmtag said. “We really felt that we would be the team to take the ball across the goal line.”

Now, after decades of debate over the need for a new airport and its location, the noise of Lindbergh Field is not the only thing fueling the push for a new site.

Economic questions have brought the airport issue to a crossroads, and Palmtag is optimistic that San Diego will soon resolve its air transportation dilemma.

“I think we have a compromise solution at the ready in TwinPorts,” she said, referring to a proposed binational airport that would straddle the U.S.-Mexico border at Otay Mesa.

Others, however, paint a bleak picture of TwinPorts as an unworkable proposal.

They argue that the site is home to six federally listed endangered species and 48 species that are candidates for such listing, making an airport there an environmental holocaust.

They also say that San Diego politicians have been too quick to dismiss a site right under their noses: Miramar Naval Air Station. Centrally located and surrounded by lots of vacant land, the base would be perfect, they say.

Critics say that San Diego abandoned the idea of using Miramar simply because politically powerful neighborhoods such as La Jolla, Clairemont and Scripps Ranch would be affected if Miramar were turned into a commercial airport. And putting an airport in Otay Mesa, critics say, is just another example of San Diego dumping its problems on the people in South Bay.

Also, jointly operating an airport with another country would result in endless bureaucratic complications over noise, safety, environmental and economic issues that would make building and operating TwinPorts a nightmare, critics say.

Although TwinPorts is closer to reality than any other previous proposal, there are no guarantees.

“There could be a lot of fatal flaws,” said Michael Zdon, a senior transportation planner with the San Diego Assn. of Governments. “There may be serious environmental concerns that can’t be mitigated, or Mexico may balk at us using their air space, or, of course, the city of San Diego may change its mind.”

The most recent action toward a new airport came last month when the city of San Diego contracted with an Orange-based consultant, P&D; Technologies, to begin work on a $2.5-million master plan for TwinPorts.

The proposal would take Brown Field, a general aviation facility surrounded by farmland and light-industry parks, and turn it into a bustling transportation center, complete with a new freeway.

TwinPorts proposes building a 12,000-foot runway on the U.S. side of the border parallel to the runway at Tijuana’s airport. There would be separate terminals in each country, but the runways, taxiways and control tower would be shared.

The only operating airport in the world that straddles an international border is the Basel-Mulhouse Airport between Switzerland and France.

Other options include taking over or sharing Miramar Naval Air Station (a proposal the Navy adamantly opposes), expanding Lindbergh Field or deferring a decision.

P&D; Technologies plans to present to the City Council by mid-May a preliminary progress report on the first phase of the TwinPorts master plan. That phase, the first of four, will include an airspace study to determine whether the Federal Aviation Authority would approve of the flight paths in and out of the area and a study to determine the proposed airport’s economic impacts.

Planning and design for an airport at Otay Mesa could take more than three years before construction begins and five years to complete, according to Sandag.

The price tag for the airport alone would be more than $1 billion, with hundreds of millions of dollars more to be spent on freeways and other transportation needs.

Although San Diego has known for decades that Lindbergh Field will have to be either enlarged or replaced, it took the crash of a PSA jetliner in 1978 to light a fire in the movement toward finding a new airport, some say.

But except for those directly affected by Lindbergh Field and those who may be directly impacted by a new airport, few San Diegans are sufficiently aware of the pressing need to deal with the issue or how it will affect the entire region, said Charles Nathanson, executive director of San Diego Dialogue. The nonpartisan organization promotes discussion of civic issues and is administered through the UC San Diego Extension.

Nathanson believes that circumstances which developed in the last decade have converged to make it imperative that San Diego decide on the new airport now, and this has led to an awakening of public awareness on the issue.

First, a city-imposed ban on development on and near the Otay Mesa site for the proposed binational TwinPorts airport is due to expire soon, and, at most, San Diego can ask for a one-year extension of the moratorium.

If the ban expires and development begins on the site, it is likely that the city will forever lose it as a potential location, and be left with only the Miramar Naval Air Station as a possible future airport site, Nathanson said.

Second, changes in the attitude of the government in Mexico toward free trade and that country’s recent desire to promote industry and tourism along its North Coast may mean a government more amenable to negotiating a cooperative operation agreement for an airport, he said.

Finally, a doubling of traffic at Lindbergh Field in the 1980s has brought the airport much closer to its capacity, with some projections that the facility may reach its limit by 2005 or 2010. Since it takes 10 to 15 years to build a new airport, planning for one takes on greater urgency, Nathanson said.

“This area is becoming aware of its long-term economic difficulties in a way it wasn’t aware of it in 1978,” Nathanson said.

In the coming months, San Diego Dialogue plans to distribute thousands of copies of its pamphlet, “San Diego’s Airport Options,” and stimulate public discussion on decisions about the airport and the impact those decisions would have on the region.

Nathanson emphasizes that San Diego’s decision on the airport affects more than noise levels around Lindbergh Field and whether San Diego can persuade the Navy to relinquish its grip Miramar.

The region’s psyche, its values and its identity are at stake.

“People don’t understand that by deciding (about) the airport . . . they are deciding more than just the problem at Lindbergh Field, the congestion and safety, but the economy of San Diego,” said Nathanson, who is also a professor of public policy at UCSD Extension. “It’s whether San Diego moves toward closer relationships with Tijuana and Mexico or cuts itself off and becomes like a Santa Barbara.”

Unlike Chicago, where the search for a new airport site has proved a simpler task, such a development in San Diego would change the face of the area dramatically and permanently.

It is this discussion that San Diego Dialogue hopes to evoke when it distributes its airport options pamphlet and holds public forums in the following months, Nathanson said.

As for the airport itself, after decades of waiting and wondering, it is still difficult to say close San Diego has come to resolving its airport problem.

San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts compares the quest for an airport to a marathon race.

“In the past, we never really got past the first mile. We did a lot of studies, but then they were dropped. In comparison, we are, maybe, at the 2-mile marker,” Roberts said.

The current Master Plan study for a new airport is the first ever for San Diego.

“We are into issues and questions that take us well beyond where we have ever been, but we still have a long, long way to go,” he said.

Not only does San Diego have a long way to go, the city might not be on the right road, and there’s still a good chance that it will turn back, Roberts said.

“Any time you do something significant, you automatically have a lot of people who, for whatever reasons, rightly or wrongly, want to see it stopped,” Roberts said. “I will feel comfortable only when I see them pouring concrete out there for the runways.”

While Palmtag, the Loma Portal resident, does not view TwinPorts as the perfect solution, she, like many others, has resigned herself to supporting it as the only feasible solution.

“It’s an exciting concept and one that really is doable. You have to look at it as something that is possible rather than just finding why things won’t work,” she said.

Others are even less optimistic about where San Diego stands on the road to getting a new airport, or if it’s a road we should be taking.

“We aren’t anywhere . . . we’ve just spent more money,” said Assemblyman Steven Peace (R-Chula Vista), whose district includes the TwinPorts site in Otay Mesa.

Peace opposes the TwinPorts idea, arguing that a viable option exists with Miramar and that San Diego politicians have “dismissed an otherwise meritorious proposal simply because of political opposition.”

And, Peace said, he is also not convinced that a new, larger airport is necessary.

“San Diego is not, by definition, a non-destination town. You have to be headed here to come to this airport. An international airport needs to have the role of transferring the passengers and whatnot (to go to other destinations) for it to make sense.”

To Peace, San Diego politicians muddling through the airport decision-making process over the last few decades have been a blessing.

“We’re lucky that the political dynamic has kept them from getting any further because they would probably go out and actually build an airport,” Peace said.

Instead, Peace envisions a network of high-speed rail lines linking the airport in San Diego with those of her neighbors.

But Roberts argues that, without a new airport, San Diego will become economically stagnant, a frontier town left behind by the transportation revolution.

“You can’t paint a vision of your biotech community and your health services centers and your high-tech industry of being successful in the long run if you don’t have this” new airport, Roberts said.

“As for tourism, it’s inconceivable that we will succeed and compete on the level that we would like to as that airport becomes increasingly congested and doesn’t allow people to fly in as easily as they would like to,” said Roberts, whose district includes Lindbergh Field.

San Diego has known since the mid-1950s that Lindbergh Field could not fully meet its future air traffic needs of the region, and public agencies have studied aspects of the issue and possible solutions to the problem several times.

In 1959, the city of San Diego hired a consultant to investigate the possibility of expanding Brown Field into a major airport. That study concluded that “operations at a fully developed Brown Field could not operate independently of those existing at the Tijuana Airport and that operations at both would have to be under the jurisdiction of a single control tower,” a Sandag bibliography of aviation studies said.

According to San Diego Dialogue, 34 airport studies have been conducted over the last 30 years.

Sandag estimates that by 1995, Lindbergh Field will reach its capacity of serving 15 million passengers a year.

“After 1995, we start to lose an economic opportunity and by the year 2000, that may mean 35,000 jobs might not be in this region because of a constrained Lindbergh Field,” said Zdon, the Sandag planner.

But the multiple studies over the years have wavered in their support of one site or the other. Sandag itself bounced from favoring the Otay Mesa site in the early 1970s to preferring Miramar in a 1981 report and back to Otay Mesa in its last study, in 1989. The cost of the studies totaled more than $500,000, Zdon said.

OPTION 1: Commit to TwinPorts

The 3,000-acre site in Otay Mesa would be developed jointly with Mexico, using Tijuana’s Rodriguez Field. The airports would share runways, taxiways and a control tower, but would have separate passenger terminals and customs facilities.

TwinPorts would allow San Diego to receive an additional 25 million passengers annually, compared to Lindbergh Field’s current capacity of 16 million. The proposed longer runway would also allow direct, nonstop international flights to arrive in San Diego, something not now possible at Lindbergh.

No official cost estimates are available.

Advocates say that:

* Otay Mesa is the only currently available site capable of accommodating the county’s projected long-term growth in air traffic.

* If San Diego does not act soon to solve its airport problem, neighboring counties will develop their own international airstrips and lure major airlines from congested Lindbergh Field.

* Cooperating with Tijuana for airport services would allow the San Diego-Tijuana region to grow into a Pacific Rim gateway linking Mexico and the Southwest United States to the rest of the world.

* At a time when San Diego has been losing manufacturing and defense-related business, it is irresponsible to delay promoting new economic opportunities for the region, such as the ones a new airport would provide.

Critics say that:

* TwinPorts is economically unworkable since a new airport is usually not a sound investment when an old airport remains open.

* Forecasts of future demand are highly unreliable when conditions change radically, as is occurring in the airline industry and the U.S. economy.

* Lower air fares after deregulation, a booming defense budget and large tax cuts for the wealthy helped double air passenger traffic at Lindbergh in the 1980s, but those conditions are not likely to recur in the coming decades.

* The TwinPorts strategy works only if the airlines want to develop the facility as a regional hub for international service, but no official study of airline thinking about the San Diego region has been done.

* The South Bay area always seems to be a dumping ground for the region’s unwanted facilities, because residents are heavily Latino and working-class, with less power in the political process.

OPTION 2: Relocate to Miramar

Two other technically feasible sites for a new San Diego airport identified by the San Diego Assn. of Governments involve Miramar Naval Air Station, a major training, support and repair base for fighter jets.

A new airport at either the western or eastern end of the 23,000-acre site could accommodate 40 million passengers a year and allow for the closure of Lindbergh Field, something not possible under the TwinPorts plan.

Sandag estimates it would cost about $1.4 billion to develop the western site and $3.1 billion to develop the eastern. But those figures do not include purchase of the property from the Navy or the cost of transportation improvements leading up to the airport.

The Navy has said repeatedly that the base is critical to the nation’s defense and cannot be closed or shared.

Advocates say:

* Either site at Miramar would be superior to TwinPorts for convenience, economic viability, promotion of the region’s economic growth and impact on the surrounding communities.

* Because of Miramar’s central location and good freeway access from most directions, it would be possible to close Lindbergh Field and consolidate all commercial airport activity at Miramar.

* San Diego would not have to bargain away airport revenues to Mexico or other jurisdictions with a Miramar airport.

* Noise impact and safety issues would affect fewer people at Miramar than at either TwinPorts, where large Mexican and South County populations lie under the flight path, or at an expanded Lindbergh Field, which is considered one of the most potentially dangerous airports in the world because of its short runway and proximity to tall buildings.

Critics say:

* Pushing the Navy out of Miramar is a political impossibility, given the city’s historically strong ties to the Navy and the politically powerful coalition of local groups in North County and northern San Diego that have already mobilized to prevent it. Although Miramar might make a good and economically viable airport, the idea simply won’t come to fruition.

* The Navy has important local allies, such as slow-growth advocates who see Miramar buffering suburban North County from rampant development, much as Camp Pendleton does in Oceanside. To put a commercial airport at Miramar would open the floodgates to unwanted development.

* Throwing the Navy out of Miramar would destroy 15,000 jobs that contribute $229 million to the economy each year, and it is foolish to destroy jobs in order to create them.

OPTION 3: Expand Lindbergh Field

Expansion of San Diego’s current airport would require the acquisition of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, 451 acres immediately north of Lindbergh Field. This option would permit the construction of a 7,500-foot runway parallel to the existing runway, and increase the airport’s capacity to 25 million passengers a year from 16 million.

The expansion would require corresponding improvements such as a new terminal and upgraded surface street connections to it.

The expansion, however, would not allow fully loaded, wide-body jets to fly out of the airport, limiting but not eliminating nonstop international travel out of the region.

Advocates say:

* The idea has a good shot at becoming reality, unlike the grander plans of buying Miramar or building TwinPorts.

* It would ease flight delays and terminal and road congestion at Lindbergh for the next 30 years.

* It would give the city time to explore how much demand exists for overseas air service. San Diego could test the market with the new Boeing 777, which would be capable of making nonstop international flights out of an expanded Lindbergh.

* Expanding Lindbergh avoids huge capital investments at an economically difficult time.

Critics say:

* Expanding Lindbergh provides less value per dollar than either TwinPorts or Miramar and pours money into an airfield that is too close to downtown buildings and hills as well as residential communities.

* This choice does little to promote the region’s economic viability or upgrade the quality of its infrastructure and economic activity at a time when other cities are competing to take business from San Diego.

* Building major infrastructure incrementally is foolish, because the best return on investment comes from building capacity substantially in anticipation of increased demand.

* San Diego has evolved from a sleepy Navy and tourist town to a port of entry for thousands of immigrants seeking a better life, a home to dynamic research and development and light-manufacturing industries. This option fails to develop an economic strategy for the region, by ignoring the needs of these groups.

OPTION 4: Defer a Decision

This plan allows for a modest expansion of Lindbergh Field, a new interchange at Interstate 5 and Washington Street and improvements to access roads to ease congestion in the airport area. With these improvements, at a cost of $300 million to $400 million, Lindbergh could continue to operate under capacity until about 2010, according to the San Diego Assn. of Governments.

Advocates say:

* San Diego loses only TwinPorts by waiting, and that option is unlikely to receive Mexico’s approval. Miramar would remain as a long-term option, and, in the meantime, it might be possible to find other choices more suitable to the region.

* A false sense of urgency concerning Lindbergh has been created to drum up support for TwinPorts. Lindbergh’s safety record is excellent and the area is still relatively uncongested compared to other major airports in the country. Demand for air service has been flat at Lindbergh over the past four years, with the number of operations declining 1.3% in 1991.

* Lindbergh is unlikely to become a hub for a major airline, and studies should be done on ways to improve commuter connections between the hubs and San Diego.

* New technologies such as high-speed rail, ocean construction methods or short-takeoff, high-passenger-load planes may be developed, changing the types of airports needed in the future or greatly reducing their costs.

Critics say:

* This option promotes the greatest risk of long-term economic stagnation and decline for the region. Without a major commercial port or railroad, San Diego’s only link to the global economy is by air.

* The TwinPorts option will become more clear as the master planning process and negotiations with Mexico over airspace rights proceed. The planning for TwinPorts is further along than it has ever been, and to abandon it now would mean restarting the whole process.

* A sudden increase in passenger demand could produce serious flight delays at Lindbergh in a very short time.

* Waiting is not likely to turn up anything new except more expensive and risky propositions, such as an airport in the desert or on the ocean. An efficient air commuter system might help local business people travel, but it wouldn’t bring in jobs or industry to the region the way a new international airport would.