BURBANK : Airport Approves Promotion Plan

Burbank Airport officials are preparing a public relations campaign to promote business at the airport and to better inform the public about its plans for a new 465,000-square-foot terminal that would be four times larger than the existing structure, officials said Wednesday.

The Burbank Airport Authority has budgeted $100,000 for public relations projects this year, including the airport’s annual spring radio and billboard advertising campaign to attract customers during the summer and the publication of a quarterly newsletter with a circulation of 40,000.

But officials also want to improve communication with the community on the controversial terminal expansion and other issues, said spokesman Victor Gill.

The airport conducted a “community attitudes survey” in November and found that, although many Burbank residents appeared to support the terminal expansion, as many as half of the respondents said the Airport Authority “was not a communicative body,” Gill said.

“This is not going to be a publicity campaign to gain public acceptance of the terminal,” he said. “It is an attempt to explain ourselves and what we are doing every step of the way.”

Presently, the authority is barred from moving forward on the terminal project by a restraining order imposed by a judge after the city of Los Angeles filed suit in 1993 to block the terminal expansion.

But in December, a judge tentatively approved an updated environmental impact report on the expansion, and airport officials said they expect a final ruling in the case within two months. That would allow the authority to begin promoting the expansion once again by way of newsletters and other means. They also could begin issuing bonds to buy property and hire an engineering firm to manage the project, Gill said.

The terminal expansion is opposed by Citizens for Fair Airport Noise, a group of residents from North Hollywood, Studio City and Sherman Oaks who live in the airport’s flight paths.

Airport officials say the new building is needed to accommodate passenger growth and to remedy the siting of an existing structure that is less than 300 feet from a runway, a violation of federal aviation standards.