Panel Advises Burbank Airport to Halt Demolitions

A federal agency concerned with historic buildings has recommended that the Burbank Airport Authority stop tearing down old, mothballed Lockheed buildings until questions about their historic value can be cleared up.

But airport officials said they have no plans to heed the recommendation from the Washington D.C.-based Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, arguing they already have all the necessary clearances to destroy the buildings, which will be cleared to make way for a new airport terminal.

“They are misinformed,” said airport spokesman Victor Gill.

The latest in a long series of controversies over the construction of a terminal was welcomed by activist R.C. “Chappy” Czapiewski, a former teacher who for years has been arguing that the buildings--once home to top-secret aircraft--should be preserved.

Czapiewski’s efforts are so well known that, when asked about the issue, a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman instantly said: “Sounds like Chappy’s been on the phone again.”

Czapiewski is unapologetic: “We won the Cold War because of what was created in these buildings,” he said.

Lockheed, which once employed as many as 90,000 people in Burbank, developed a host of famous, high-tech military planes at its legendary plant called the “Skunk Works,” including the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird and the Stealth fighter.

When the company moved out in the early 1990s, it left behind hundreds of acres covered with darkened, World War II-era manufacturing plants--dirty, beige monuments to the defense industry’s heyday.

Most of the buildings have been destroyed, and the airport plans to soon level one of the largest remaining, a dusty monolith known as building 309/310, a former assembly plant next to the runway.

In 1991, the California State Historic Preservation Office determined the property is not eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, said Gill.

But in a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration dated July 8, an advisory council official said the state may not have considered a full evaluation of building 309/310 and the other smaller buildings on the site.

The FAA is involved in the airport project because it is expected to pay for about 80% of construction costs for the new terminal.

“We strongly recommend that the FAA advise the airport authority not to proceed with demolition,” the letter reads.

The advisory council is charged with making sure federal agencies follow proper procedures in dealing with sites that might be historic.

Council members are presidential appointees, and their powers are limited. Even if the Lockheed buildings were eligible for federal historic listing, the FAA could still fund the demolition, said Carole Gleichman, historic preservation specialist with the council.

The council wants to be sure the FAA is following the rules, and that the evaluation of the site’s historic import was done correctly, said Druscilla Mull, another historic preservation specialist for the council.

“All we have done at this point is to urge the FAA to slow down its demolition until this can be straightened out,” said Mull.

Mull said the letter was sparked by citizen concerns and that the council has made no judgment about whether the buildings are historic.

Czapiewski said he called the council--and a slew of other agencies--earlier this year in the hopes of stalling the demolition.

Czapiewski, a 68-year-old Korean War veteran, wants the buildings to stand as a monument to what he called America’s engineering genius in the face of the Chinese and Soviet communist threat.

“There is a total misunderstanding of what the ‘50s were like for Americans, and what the Cold War was like,” he said. “It’s important to preserve this, to know what was done by the supersecret world . . . of strategic intelligence.”

FAA spokesman Mitch Barker said the agency is reviewing the issue and has not had time to respond to the letter.

A spokesman for the California Historic Preservation Office said the agency declined to comment pending review of its records.

But Gill, of the airport authority, said that historic preservation is an issue that has already been dealt with as part of the lengthy environmental review process for the new terminal. That process “is over and done with,” he said.

Current plans call for demolition sometime in the next six months, he said.