"Two California airports heading in different directions"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Two airports heading in different directions
Santa Monica's facility meets resistance to expansion, but Hawthorne's finds
the neighbors welcoming.
By James Ricci
The Los Angeles (CA) Times


While Santa Monica seeks to banish fast corporate jets from its
much-contested airport, Hawthorne has rolled out a new asphalt carpet for
them and other private planes.

Hawthorne Municipal Airport, a.k.a. Jack Northrop Field, has just completed
a $5.5-million resurfacing of its runway, part of a $25-million renovation
intended to entice new air traffic and add momentum to the revitalization of
the east side of the 90,000-population municipality.

"This is a tale of two cities," said Jeffrey Dritley of Kearny Real Estate
Co., a partner in the renewal effort. "The Hawthorne community is very
supportive of the airport, and Santa Monica isn't. Hawthorne is encouraging
new aviation, not trying to kick it out."

The Santa Monica and Hawthorne airports are among the six designated
"reliever" airports that take the pressure of private air traffic off Los
Angeles International. The others are L.A. County-owned Whiteman Airport in
Pacoima and Brackett Field in El Monte, and municipal airports
Torrance/Zamperini Field and Compton/Woodley Airport. 

With a projected 135,000 takeoffs and landings this year, Santa Monica
Municipal Airport, in operation since 1919, is about twice as busy as
Hawthorne, which opened in 1939. The two airports have runways of similar
length, about 5,000 feet, and can accommodate aircraft of similar size. Each
was the home base of an aircraft-building company: Santa Monica of Douglas
Aircraft, and Hawthorne of Northrop Aircraft.

Hawthorne officials say their airport has certain advantages. Its runway
approach passes over the parking lots of large discount stores. At the end
of its runway are several blocks of commercial development. The airport is
only a block from the 105 Freeway and 1 1/2 miles from the 405 Freeway.

The Santa Monica airport, by contrast, is in a high-cost residential area of
congested surface streets. Some houses are a scant 300 feet from the runway.
The airport sits atop a plateau with steeply sloping sides, and a recent
city staff report likened landing there to putting down on an aircraft
carrier. Complaints about engine noise and fears of aircraft crashing into
houses are common themes in that city's civic debate.

In January, the Santa Monica City Council will take a final vote on banning
the fastest jets that use the airport, including such models as the
$37-million Gulfstream IV and $20 million-plus Cessna Citation X. The
council voted 7-0 in favor of such a ban in a preliminary vote in November,
but the Federal Aviation Administration has vowed to fight it.

The Hawthorne redevelopers are betting that business jets are a vital part
of the future of private aviation, as use of single-engine propeller planes
continues declining from its heyday in the 1980s.

Hawthorne Mayor Larry Guidi said the faster jets have not been an issue
among local residents.

"You don't hear the new jets," he said. "I know because I live right under
the flight path. The noisy ones are the little, single-engine propeller jobs
flying low."

Dritley added that when the airport redevelopment plan underwent a series of
public hearings, "there was almost no opposition. That's got to be unique in
the United States. People in the FAA were dumbfounded."

Jose Gutierrez, president of the homeowners association of Holly Park, the
residential area nearest the airport, said community reaction to the
renovation has been generally positive. 

"We hear more hum from the commercial jets on approach to LAX to the north
of us than we do from the sporadic private aircraft that touch down at
Hawthorne Airport," he wrote in response to an e-mail requesting his
comments. "The Hawthorne Airport has been good to us. No flights leave
before 6 a.m. and no flights land after 6 p.m. during winter, and no later
than 8 p.m. during summer."

Significant socioeconomic and historical differences exist between seaside
Santa Monica and workaday Hawthorne. Santa Monica is wealthy and mostly
white and has a tradition of civic protest. Hawthorne is largely blue-collar
and middle-class. In recent years, it has become increasingly Latino. These
differences, Guidi said, help explain why the two cities have such divergent
attitudes about their airports. 

In 2001, Hawthorne residents voted 71% to 29% against a plan to close the
long-neglected airport and develop the property for housing and other uses. 

Hawthorne residents, especially those of long standing, consider the airport
part of local history, Guidi said. Northrop founder "Jack Northrop came
here, and many people will tell you, 'My grandfather worked for Northrop,'
'My father worked for Northrop,' 'My uncles worked for Northrup.' The
airport was nostalgic for them, like the Beach Boys and Marilyn Monroe."

For four years after the vote, however, nothing was done to improve the
airport. 

Finally, Guidi approached Dritley's company and its partner, Wedgewood
Enterprises, about setting up a public-private arrangement for running the
airport. 

The partnership had its eye on 86 privately owned acres to the airport's
immediate south (they're now the site of the partnership's $150-million
Century Business Center industrial park of new and renovated structures).
The city agreed to lease all of the airport's non-runway property to the
partnership for 35 years in exchange for an annual payment that currently is
$530,000.

The arrangement answered Guidi's question about how to "find somebody else
to pay the bills" at the airport.

To the partnership it offered a chance of "getting a leg up" on acquiring
the acreage to the south, Dritley said.

Moreover, Hawthorne was coming out of an economic swoon brought on by the
shuttering of the Northrop manufacturing facilities in the 1990s.

"For us to get involved in a lot of things around here, that was a
no-brainer for us," Dritley said.

The partnership spent $1 million remodeling the airport's terminal. It
enlisted Million Air, a franchiser of upscale private aviation services, to
provide a template for the redone facility, which is staffed by partnership
employees.

Ripped carpeting repaired with duct tape, worn linoleum and stained chairs
gave way to new stone floors, hotel-like restrooms, computer stations, a
conference room and a luxurious pilots' lounge with leather recliners and a
large flat-screen television. Construction is to begin next April on the
first of 42 new hangars of various sizes. 

Santa Monica Airport manager Robert Trimborn, who learned to fly at
Hawthorne Airport and ran that facility from 1983 to 1993, said he did not
believe the improvements would draw traffic from Santa Monica. "Aviation is
like any other transportation system. People go where they want to go,
because they want to go there, and a lot of people want to come to Santa
Monica."

Dritley said the Hawthorne partnership has been actively marketing its
airport to private pilots and charter companies regardless of the airports
they use.

The airport project is one of a number of developments transforming the
city's long-moribund east side. 

Next July, a Target store is to join the 3-year-old Lowe's store across
Crenshaw Boulevard from the airport. Also on the drawing board for that area
is a gated community of 174 residences, to be called Central Park.

In January, the Century Business Center will become home to PayPal founder
Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which is moving into a
renovated 515,000-square foot facility formerly occupied by Northrop.

The redevelopers project that the Hawthorne field eventually will reach
Santa Monica's level of air traffic. Pilots encountering the redone airport
for the first time have been impressed, said airport manager Bruce McCall.
"Now we have pilots coming in here and being stunned," he said.


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