Council Hears Airport Expansion Plan : Hawthorne: Reception to proposal is lukewarm. More hearings are required before condemnation of homes can occur.

A renovation and expansion plan for the Hawthorne Municipal Airport, which could lead to the removal of about 170 homes, received a lukewarm reception from some City Council members and homeowners at a public hearing earlier this week.

The Monday hearing came three years after Hawthorne airport officials first proposed the building plan for the tiny airport to make room for more aircraft and businesses. By law, more hearings must be held before any homes could be acquired for the general aviation airport’s expansion.

Airport Manager Robert Trimborn, who opened the 1 1/2-hour hearing with a 20-minute video about the growing use and importance of private planes, told the standing-room-only audience that the expansion and renovation are needed to attract businesses to the city and to handle overflow traffic from Los Angeles International.

Although about 250 aircraft are now parked at the airport, airport officials estimate they will need space for a total of 467 hangars by 1996 to keep up with rising demand, according to a report compiled by Franzoy-Corey airport consultants. At the same time, the number of takeoffs and landings at the airport is expected to rise from 101,758 in 1989 to 198,900 in 1996.

“As freeway and surface transportation becomes more and more congested, more companies in the region will look to the air to move their employees and executives, saving valuable staff time and frustration,” Trimborn said. “By improving and upgrading the Hawthorne Municipal Airport, hopefully more corporations will locate near the airport to take advantage (of) the access it provides to the area.”

Although the council has not yet agreed to expand the airport, state law requires that it adopt a blueprint for future airport development decisions. At the end of the hearing Monday night, the council voted unanimously to have the city attorney draft a resolution to adopt such a blueprint, known as a master plan. The council is expected to vote on it next month.

The council would not be obligated to develop the airport according to the plan. But opponents of the expansion used the hearing to air fears of losing their homes.

All of the 170 homes that could be affected, if the council decides to expand the airport to the full extent outlined in the plan, are north of the airport, between Prairie Avenue and the Century Freeway. Most of the homes lie along 119th and 120th Streets in an area where property values have been depressed by nearby construction of the Century Freeway.

Many of the homeowners, who narrowly escaped having their homes condemned several years ago to make room for the freeway, said it wouldn’t be fair to remove homes and relocate families for the benefit of a privileged elite who use the airport for business and recreation.

“To ask people to give up their hard-earned real estate interests for someone else’s recreation puts a different color on what’s being asked for here,” said Joe Moshe, 37, a Westchester pilot whose parents own a residence that they rent out near the Hawthorne Airport.

Lawrence Read, who has lived near the airport since the early 1960s, agreed, telling the council that he and other homeowners fear they would not be justly compensated for their homes.

“It is nice to have an airport in town, but we’re all very concerned over there, and we want you to think very seriously about us because we’ve had a lot of buffeting over the (Century) freeway,” Read said. “We’ve been unable to sell our property for the amount we should receive because we’ve had (the freeway) hanging over our heads.”

The council members, however, took turns assuring residents that no portion of the four-phase plan would be adopted without public hearings and that voting for the master plan does not keep the council from modifying it.

“This is nothing more than merely a plan,” Councilman David M. York said. “It doesn’t guarantee that anything is going to be done.”

Added Councilman Steven Andersen: “This is not an authorization to fire up the bulldozers and start taking people’s homes.”

Airport officials began improving the airport grounds in 1984 by installing new runway lights, adding hangars and areas where planes can be tied down, and repaving inner roads.

In the next two years, they are planning to spend $1.3 million--90% in federal funds--to revamp taxiway lights, improve the drainage system and paint hangars.

The proposed plan, which identifies those improvements as the airport’s first renovation phase, outlines three more possible development phases, all of which call for expanding the airport grounds into a largely residential area.

The plan also drew criticism from some whose homes would not be threatened. Hawthorne community activist Martha Bails, who lives outside the proposed expansion area, said Monday she opposes enlarging the airport because of the noise that additional airplanes would generate.

An environmental impact report and noise compatibility report said the number of homes affected by airport noise would more than triple--from about 50 to 170--if all phases of the building plan are adopted.