Burbank Sues Over Airport Expansion

With a six-month truce about to expire, feuding officials remain as far apart as ever over a proposed passenger terminal at Burbank Airport.

On Wednesday, Burbank city officials sued their airport partners, the cities of Glendale and Pasadena, seeking an order blocking the purchase of land for the expansion.

“The bottom line is we’re not going to sit around and watch them build a terminal that’s three times the size of this one without having a fair say in the matter,” Burbank City Council member Bob Kramer said.

The suit came a day after the nine-member airport authority, made up of three representatives from each of the cities, sought a court order to bar Burbank from opposing a larger terminal.

The cities share management of the airport, but Burbank, the host city, has waged a bitter fight against expansion out of fear of increased congestion and noise.

Last December, the three cities agreed to a moratorium on new litigation and said they would hire mediators to try to work out their differences. But rather than paving the way for a compromise on improving the airport, the “cooling off” period has brought more bickering.

To many, the collapse of the truce was inevitable.

“It’s all bad from our point of view. We’re faced with the same situation we were six months ago,” Burbank City Councilman Ted McConkey said. “It’s a Burbank Chernobyl, and the fallout is going to extend far beyond city limits.”

The failure of mediation left Burbank’s concerns about noise, traffic and influence over an expanded airport unresolved.

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The impasse also temporarily blocked the efforts of Glendale and Pasadena representatives, who are eager to replace the old terminal with a modern terminal farther from existing runways. They say they simply want to ensure the viability of the airport, which serves 5 million passengers annually.

Many in Burbank fear that the authority’s expected purchase of about 140 acres from Lockheed Martin Corp. for terminal expansion is virtually a done deal. Only the truce has kept officials from signing on the dotted line, they say.

Airport and authority officials acknowledge that staff members have been working toward an agreement with Lockheed and hope to finalize a deal as soon as possible. Estimates of the land’s cost are around $110 million, with the terminal building--which would be at least several years away--probably costing an additional $235 million, officials said.

Despite objecting vigorously, the authority’s Burbank contingent has been powerless to stop the land purchase. The Glendale and Pasadena members regularly vote as a bloc against the Burbank group.

Lawyers for the city of Los Angeles, representing residents near the airport, have already sued in an effort to block construction of the 465,000-square-foot terminal, three times the size of the existing one.

Airport officials say the new terminal is needed to meet the growing demands of air travelers in the area. And noise, based on figures reported to federal authorities, has declined in recent years primarily because of quieter planes, they say.

The rancorous nature of the debate regularly shows in public.

At the latest airport authority meeting earlier this month, Carl Raggio Jr. of Glendale, the group’s president, banged his gavel and adjourned the meeting as authority secretary Margie Gee of Burbank repeatedly tried to make a point.

“Mrs. Gee, we’re going to go to closed session and we’re going to go now,” Raggio said.

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While Burbank representatives complain about what they consider Raggio’s heavy-handedness, Raggio counters that too much time is spent on minutiae.

For instance, the authority and its subcommittees have thoroughly reviewed issues such as the airport’s recently approved $42-million budget for fiscal 1996-97, he said, and there is no reason for authority members to continue to question the budget.

Raggio was among those who said his main goal was to move the airport terminal forward. The Federal Aviation Administration long ago recommended moving the terminal farther from the runways for safety reasons.

The animosity is not limited to expansion. The authority has challenged a new parking tax imposed by Burbank that calls for a 10% tax at profit-making parking facilities. The city ordinance, effective Feb. 1, would cost the airport about $1.2 million of its estimated $12 million in parking revenue a year.

Gerald W. Cormick, one of the two mediators hired in March, said that despite the many obstacles, his goal remains to broker a working agreement by June 19. Cormick said the deadline could bring several results. Among them: A deal could be struck where the two sides agree to plot forward movement, an extension to the mediation could be declared or the talks could be cut off completely.