Airport Panel OKs Spending on Study of Its Own Site

In yet another sign that relations between Burbank Airport and the city are deteriorating, the airport’s governing board voted 5 to 3 Tuesday to spend $841,278 on an environmental review for a terminal to be built on existing airport land.

The action by the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority gives the go-ahead to San Francisco-based Environmental Science Associates to review the expected impact of a 14-gate, 250,000-square-foot terminal on 41 acres of land on the southwest side of the airport.

The move appears to be the clearest signal yet that airport officials are souring on their first choice for a terminal site: the 130-acre Plant B-6 site previously owned by Lockheed Martin.

“Most of the commissioners who voted for this believed they were forced to do so because they did not see any sign that Burbank was going to accommodate a project on the B-6 property,” said Burbank Airport spokesman Victor Gill. “That property is now up for sale.”

Charles Lombardo, one of three Burbank appointees to the nine-member Airport Authority, said he was disappointed by the authority’s action.

“The reactions are like saying ‘ready, fire, aim’,” Lombardo said. “Instead of having a focused approach to a resolution, we are now going to have an old argument about a new parcel, one that is a third of the size of the B-6 property and ultimately does not resolve the mandatory curfew issue.”

The airport has been trying to overhaul the 70-year-old terminal--which is too near the east-west runway to meet modern safety standards--since 1980.

Airport and Burbank city officials were hoping to avoid a formal noise study when they reached an August 1999 deal to build a 14-gate terminal in exchange for plans to shut it down between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

That agreement hit major turbulence after a proposed development agreement between the city of Burbank and the airport fell apart when the Federal Aviation Administration called for a lengthy noise study pending approval of a mandatory curfew, and both sides failed to come to terms on the terminal by the May 24 deadline last year.

Missing the deadline meant the B-6 property was put up for sale, but both sides continued negotiations. Recently however, airport officials were angered by Burbank’s demands for a new environmental study, which pushed back a City Council vote on the terminal project.

Airport Executive Director Dios Marerro, one of the key negotiators of an ill-fated 1999 agreement on the new terminal, announced Feb. 5 that he was stepping aside.