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This Time, Will Tweed Fly?
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Business New Haven
2/4/2002
By:
Mimi Houston
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One of our favorite outings as children was a trip to Tweed-New Haven Airport to watch the airplanes land and take off. Often we'd stop after a day at the beach in East Haven and thrill to the sound of the engines.
That was back in the 1970s, when Tweed was enjoying a relative heyday. Big plans were talked about for that airport. Thirty years later they're still talked about - often heatedly - yet progress has been retrograde.
Flights from Tweed-New Haven have been reduced to five a day on U.S. Airways service to Philadelphia. Yet because of lack of competition at the airport, those flights ticket at almost $100 more than the same service from Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.
Before the September 11 terror attacks, U.S. Airways also flew from Tweed to Washington, D.C. That service has since been discontinued, though airport officials are hopeful it may one day be reinstated.
A decades-old tug-of-war between supporters and opponents of the airport is nearing its climax. Most days it can be hard to see which way the wind is blowing, but one thing you can always count on is active turbulence in both East Haven and New Haven's Morris Cove neighborhood.
“In my opinion, it's a poor site for an airport,” says Todd Kramer, a New Haven architect and Morris Cove homeowner. “The area is so tightly packed. It's a very nice neighborhood - quiet, peaceful - a good place to live. But it won't be if they expand the airport.”
Like many of his neighbors, Kramer is concerned with noise level, increased traffic and the effect expansion may have on property values.
“Property values in our area have been going up,” he notes. “This house was a good investment when I bought it. If they go ahead and expand the airport, it will turn out not to be a good investment.”
Neighbor Sal Rapacciuolo agrees. “I feel very passionate about this area,” he says. “Let's face it: They're not making any more shorelines these days. It's a beautiful area. We have nice parks, a lot of scenic views, and one quarter of the city's tax base comes out of the Morris Cove area.”
Expanding Tweed would be “a major, major undertaking,” he adds, “and there are just too many obstacles. There are environmental obstacles - 30 acres of wetlands that are going to be invaded. They want to reroute Tuttle Brook and Morris Creek.
“And then there are the houses,” adds Rapacciuolo. “If they succeed, they'll be removing out of this area 176 houses. We're talking about people's homes here.”
Rapacciuolo has been monitoring Tweed expansion plans for years - with increasing trepidation.
“I started getting involved in this issue in 1996,” he recalls, “as an environmentalist thinking about jet fuel and other health concerns. As time went on, I started to realize that for what they want to do, this is not the location. They're trying to make a thoroughbred out of a Shetland Pony.
“I'm not anti-Tweed, the airport has been a good neighbor,” he explains, “just anti-expansion - and for a very logical reason. With everything that is going to be happening in this area in the near future - the expansion of the Q-bridge, the I-95 corridor [see related story, page 8], Bradley growing by leaps and bounds - our tax dollars could be better spent in other areas. In 1982 there was a master plan done. That one stated there would be no more airport expansion.”
On the other side of the fence are a group of loyal supporters eager to prove that Tweed - a military air training base during World War II - will soldier on in a new century.
One is Lawrence J. DeNardis, president of the University of New Haven and chairman of the Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority. DeNardis envisions a day when the airport will fulfill its role serving the Southern Connecticut air traffic needs that he and other transportation and business experts lament are currently woefully underserved.
“Just to fly to Chicago,” recalls DeNardis, “which I recently had to do, was a real trial. You can't do that too often, and yet if you need to fly there frequently for your business…”
DeNardis describes an unappetizing quandary of inconvenience facing the business owner or executive who wants to call greater New Haven home, yet can't access adequate air service to meet corporate travel agendas.
“We need to convince the public that a viable airport at Tweed is economically essential to the region,” DeNardis says. “If the lights go out at the airport it would be a disaster for East Haven and for New Haven. It would be an economic entity that would be the equivalent of boarding up the abutting neighborhoods, as these neighborhoods would rapidly lose value.”
DeNardis and the 13 other members of the airport authority will decide on February 13 whether they have sufficiently convinced the public. That's when they'll vote on adoption of the master plan to expand the airport. After listening to testimony at two public hearings late month, the panel will determine the best path to take.
The decision will not be an easy one. While the January 23 meeting in Hamden drew only some 60 attendees who were mainly calm and pro-expansion, the following evening's meeting at the airport was a different story. An SRO crowd of more than 300 filled the room with non-stop noise. There were a few Tweed supporters present, but the loudest attendees were opponents.
“I thought they did a beautiful job presenting their ideas,” said one meeting attendee, a widow who lives next door to the airport but chose not to be identified. “They showed us maps and drawings and gave us handouts to take home. I'm for the expansion, for selfish reasons. They talked about jets being able to fly into places like Chicago and Atlanta; my daughter lives in Atlanta. It would be so convenient.
“But I was embarrassed by my neighbors,” she frowns. “They were very disrespectful, even heckling the speakers - especially everyone who was standing in the back. It was awful. I mean, everyone should be allowed to state their own opinion.”
The airport authority includes nine members appointed by New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., three by the south-central regional Council of Governments and two appointed by Mayor Joseph Maturo of East Haven.
DeNardis is confident that his colleagues will return a favorable decision.
“We cannot exist on low-level activity,” he says of the current five to six Tweed flights daily. “We've got to get back to where we were in the early '90s. Even the immediate neighbors support that.”
Edwin Van Selden, executive director of the airport authority, says that lengthened Tweed runways would accommodate larger aircraft and thus open hub destinations - a key requirement for the airport's future viability.
“In the 1970s, Selden recalls, “we had big jets - [Boeing] 707s landing out there. Then the market changed. In the '70s and the '80s the airlines established hubs all over. We went from flying from point to point to flying from point to hub to point. We need to be able to fly to those hubs.”
Selden refers to the current master plan on for Tweed, which calls most notably for a 600-foot runway extension, taking the current 5,600 feet runway to 6,200 feet. Also called for are terminal expansion, improved access roads, and tree and brush removal.
Unless the longer runway is approved, DeNardis, Selden and other supporters will not get their jets into New Haven. The length of the current runway does not allow jets to carry sufficient fuel and viable passenger loads to reach more distant destinations than those presently served by smaller, slower turboprop aircraft.
The improvements are expected to impact 22 acres of surrounding land-much of it protected wetlands - acquisition of which is figured to cost roughly $60 million, most of which the federal government will reimburse. This means the authority would need to buy neighboring properties - 20 parcels to the north and seven properties to the south of the flyway.
Besides the longer runway, the plan calls for paving two 1,000-feet safety areas on either end of the runway so jets can use the additional length for takeoffs. The jets Tweed officials would like to attract require 7,200 feet for takeoffs and 6,200 feet for landings.
If the authority gets its way, the longer runway would open air service to major national hubs like Chicago, Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.
But no one discounts the voices of the Todd Kramers and the rest of the opposition. East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo remains steadfast in opposing airport changes that expand the current footprint.
Selden admits the challenge remains to resolve a decades-long Hatfields-vs.-McCoys situation. Recently lawyers for East Haven lost their case before a Supreme Court judge to tax the city of New Haven for use of the airport property because of claims that the city is running the airport as a source of future profit. The town also seeks to prove that the airport authority is improperly constituted.
In fact, Tweed has been running at a deficit, and the city of New Haven will have dedicated $11 million to subsidize the airport by the time its lease expires in 2003.
Judge John T. Downey ruled against East Haven on every count. Nicole Fournier, an attorney who along with Hugh Keefe is representing the town, lost no time in filing an appeal.
“We're hoping to get a complete reversal of the decision,” Fournier says. “We think there were errors that were made, and if the [appellate] court can find just one error the whole trial court decision could be reversed.”
“We were the defendants on the lawsuit,” explains Fournier. “We taxed the airport and it was [New Haven's] burden of proof to show they were exempt. The judge felt they did that.”
Allowing the city the standard time to respond to the appeal, Fournier estimates the case will return to a courtroom in early summer.
But in light of the continuing battle between the towns, Selden retains a brighter view of what the future can hold for the airport, the community that surrounds it, and for the region's business community.
“Accommodations need to be made,” he allows. “The airport is essential for the quality of life that we enjoy in southern Connecticut. It's an economic benefit that keeps people employed and firms growing.”
DeNardis joins him in focusing on the positive. “I think this is an interesting time in the recent history of Tweed,” he says. “Our schedule leads to the adoption of the master plan on February 13. This plan is sponsored by the FAA; it is the result of a long and careful process. If the authority adopts it - which I think it will - that plan or something close to it will go ahead.
“But there is still some heavy lifting to come,” adds DeNardis. “We still have to convince the town of East Haven that it is in their best interest to support this plan.”
DeNardis remains confident that neighbors will accept an airport that, he says, will be no busier than it was in its 1970s glory days. So we'll all be watching the skies around New Haven on the 13th.
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