Airport Officials Meet Angry Crowd

Officials with the Los Angeles Department of Airports came to the public meeting to introduce preliminary recommendations for Van Nuys Airport’s much-anticipated 20-year Master Plan.

Equipped with graphs, color-coded maps and statistic sheets on prevailing real estate and aviation market trends, a team of airport consultants laid foundation for some potential land uses for about 120 acres of airport-owned property.

But beginning with planning consultant Tom Stemnock’s attempts to deal with an uncooperative microphone system during the meeting’s opening minutes, the main issue of the evening was noise for the more than 200 homeowners at Wednesday night’s meeting.

“That’s as irritating as what’s coming out of the airport,” one audience member said, as Stemnock fiddled with the screeching system.

Throughout the meeting, the homeowners showed little patience for market analyses. They consistently voiced concerns over the increasing frequency of helicopters and turbine-engine planes flying over their houses during morning hours.

“Our communities are plagued by helicopter operations both during the day and night,” complained Gerald A. Silver, president of “Stop the Noise!,” a coalition of homeowners associations. “We need to reduce the number of helicopter and jet-propulsion flights already going out of the airport.

“Why isn’t noise reduction part of the plan?”

Stemnock said that the Master Plan could not supersede existing Federal Aviation Administration regulations regarding noise levels or flight patterns.

“We can include an analysis on noise mitigation for projects that result from the Master Plan,” said Stemnock. “But noise reduction for existing operations is beyond our scope.”

FAA studies are currently under way to re-examine noise abatement efforts.

In a Department of Airports guide of preliminary recommendations for a draft Master Plan, four parcels of airport-owned land are recommended for future development. The largest is the 75-acre former Air National Guard site. A 25-acre strip of that site has been marked for aviation-related uses.

The remainder of the land is recommended for such non-aviation uses as office space and commercial development.

In a series of smaller meetings to be held over the next several months with representatives from the business and residential communities, the department will field suggestions on how to best utilize that land.

“At this stage in the game, we want to keep everybody’s minds open,” said Wanda Williams, project manager for the Master Plan.

“We’re a good four to six months away from even having a draft proposal.”

A final draft of the plan is expected to be completed in July, 1996.