Look for a crowd at Wednesday's airport hearing Look for a crowd at Wednesday's airport hearing (April 30, 2004)

by Jeb Bing

T he Livermore Planning Commission is scheduled to hold the first of two hearings next Wednesday on a controversial plan to expand the Livermore Airport. The hearing was postponed from last month when nearly 400 showed up for a meeting in the Livermore City Council's meeting facility that can only accommodate 126. Wednesday's meeting will start at 7 p.m. in the more spacious Shrine Event Center, which is located, appropriately, on Lindbergh Avenue near the airport. What's puzzling to those who want to learn more about the expansion and possibly speak publicly about it is the continued speed with which Livermore officials seem to be moving the plan through the city's approval process. They say that the 1975 Master Plan Update, the official name of the expansion proposal, has been under consideration for 10 years or longer, and are baffled by the sudden opposition.

But few object to the airport or even moderate expansion. I've flown in and out of Livermore with my son, who is a pilot, and have attended airport functions and the annual Livermore Airport Appreciation Days. It's a popular, well-run airport that still has a "small town" feel. You can be off the ground in minutes after completing a pre-flight check, and back down shortly after having the field in sight with few delays. Even security is lax. Anyone can walk from the parking lot through the small terminal and onto the field with no questions asked or, usually, no one even there to ask them. Try that at the larger regional airports that many recreational pilots have to use.

But times are changing, and certainly growth throughout the Tri-Valley is part of that change. Just this week, Tom Mitze, a consultant working on Livermore's performing arts center proposal, said we now have over 300,000 people living in the area. That would be a metropolitan center of its own in many parts of the country, one that would likely have its own commercial airport. That's not the future most of us want for Livermore's airport. Yet Brian Swift, Pleasanton's Planning Director, has determined that the proposed expansion could increase the annual number of flights from 257,500 at Livermore in 2001 (the base line used for the new plan) to 370,000 in 2020. Jet flights could jump from 2,220 to 18,500, with proposed new and larger hangars and other flight services, including jet fuel capacities, raising to 30 the number of jets actually based at Livermore.

Extending the shorter of the airport's two runways from 2,700 to 4,000 feet is probably no big deal. It would add to the safety of planes coming and going and free up runway space for the frequent "touch and go" practice flights that are common at Livermore. More hangars and better airport-related services also make sense for the intercity traffic into and out of the Tri-Valley. But what Livermore should not do - as is in the plan - is to upgrade the airport to handle larger aircraft as a fixed base operator (FBO) under FDA guidelines. This would mean building more fuel, oxygen, deicing fluid, toilet emptying and potable water facilities to accommodate larger jets that need these services to travel long distances, even across the country. Right now, Livermore doesn't offer these, so it is not considered a choice stop for business jets used increasingly by companies to move their management and sales teams between facilities. They'd switch in a minute from Oakland and San Jose to Livermore if they could.

Faced with threats of legal action, Livermore authorities have set up a 21-member panel to hear the concerns of officials in Pleasanton and Dublin. That city's Planning Commission will hear them, too, as the expansion approval process continues unchecked. Look for a long and crowded hearing next Wednesday night.

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