Council’s Final Vote on LAX Modernization Advances Plan

The City Council overwhelmingly approved several measures tied to Mayor James K. Hahn’s $11-billion modernization plan for Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, clearing the way for federal officials to decide whether to sign off on the proposal early next year.

In its third and final action on the plan, the council voted 12 to 3 to make zoning changes in communities around LAX and approve a planning document that dictates the order in which projects will be undertaken.

Councilmen Bernard C. Parks, Antonio Villaraigosa and Jack Weiss were opposed.

The decision capped an arduous seven-month process in which the mayor’s plan was blessed by the city’s airport and planning commissions, several council committees and eventually the council itself. The city has spent 10 years and $147 million studying how to remodel LAX, which had its last face-lift for the 1984 Olympics.

“We can’t put up a chain-link fence and say, ‘You can’t go into LAX,’ ” Councilman Dennis Zine said. “The lines will just get longer and longer and longer.”

Under a plan pushed by Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who is widely credited with rescuing Hahn’s proposal, the modernization would occur in two phases.

The “green light” projects include a transit hub, a consolidated rental-car center, an elevated people-mover and the relocation of the southernmost runway 55 feet closer to El Segundo. These projects would cost about $3 billion.

The second phase, or “yellow light” projects, would require additional environmental, traffic and security review. The elements of this phase include a remote check-in center near the San Diego Freeway, demolition of Terminals 1, 2 and 3, and construction of a new terminal complex in the middle of the airport’s horseshoe-shaped roadway. This portion of the modernization would cost $8 billion.

Opponents are expected to file lawsuits by Jan. 7 to stop the plan. L.A. County and the cities of Inglewood, El Segundo and Culver City, along with several groups of airport-area residents, have all threatened litigation. The county has asked for a legally binding agreement that would limit growth at LAX and for the city’s removal of the remote check-in center from the plan.

Los Angeles and El Segundo officials also plan to travel to Washington next month to present a deal to the Federal Aviation Administration in which the city would hold LAX to 78.9 million annual passengers by limiting the number of gates where airplanes park.

In a separate action Tuesday, the council also signed off on a landmark $499.5-million package designed to improve the quality of life for airport-area residents by lessening noise, traffic and air pollution and providing more jobs. The funding would allow the Inglewood and Lennox school districts to install double-paned windows, more insulation and air conditioning in schools under the flight path.