San Jose
– Larger and heavier planes have received clearance to land at
an expanded San Martin Airport, but before the planes can touch
down, county officials have to determine how much the expansion
will cost and how they’re going to pay for it.
San Jose – Larger and heavier planes have received clearance to land at an expanded San Martin Airport, but before the planes can touch down, county officials have to determine how much the expansion will cost and how they’re going to pay for it.
Without debate, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors unanimously signed off on a plan that will lengthen the airport’s runway from 3,100 to 5,000 feet and strengthen the pavement to withstand aircraft weighing up to 35,000 lbs. The plan also calls for the eventual purchase of at least 332 acres on both west and east of U.S. Highway 101.
Now the county airports commission can begin the long process of identifying all of the environmental factors it must contend with under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and craft a business plan to fund the multi-million dollar project.
“The business plan will be fairly complex. We have to take a long look at funding,” Carl Honaker, director of county airports, said. “We have to figure out when we will be solvent enough to accomplish the tasks in the priority we set them.”
The complexity matches the scope of the project. In addition to the runway expansion, the plan imagines hangar and tie-down space for 418 planes, two massive water storage facilities, a new maintenance building, a parking lot, and space dedicated to another Fixed Base Operator, or FBO, which runs non-passenger airport operations.
Those capital improvements are not eligible for grants from the Federal Aviation Administration, which only pays for runways, lighting and other navigational aides and security barriers. Nor can they draw on the county’s general fund. They must be funded through the Airport Enterprise Fund, or revenue generated by the county’s Reid-Hillview, Palo Alto and San Martin Airports, which produce about $3 million annually.
Honaker said that he has only “vague notions” of the costs of the improvements, but they will be significantly more than that.
One option for the county is illustrated in its current project to construct 100 hangars at the airport at a cost of $6.5 million. Supervisor Don Gage said the hangars will recoup their costs within five years of their completion, which is scheduled for February.
All of the 52 hangar compartments operated by 2 Genes Aviation are full, and more than a 100 people paid a deposit of more than $500 to get on a waiting list for the new hangar compartments that will rent for an average of $500 to $600 a month. The county also splits with the state a 1-percent tax on the value of all aircraft stored at the facility.
But the success of the hangars doesn’t translate into demand for an airport that can handle corporate jet traffic, says a vocal opposition to the project led by the San Martin Neighborhood Alliance and the California Pilots Association.
Douglas Rice, president of the CPA, said Tuesday that the plan “presupposes growth not compatible with the quality of life in San Martin. But if you’re a politician and you want to bring something to your community in terms of business development, you build an airport. It’s a political solution to a need that doesn’t exist.”
County officials are basing their proposal on data that show jet use and production has risen dramatically over the last decade and will continue to do so over the life of the airport’s 20-year master plan.
“There are a number of indicators that show us that aircraft use in South County is going to expand, whether for local business or as overflow,” Honaker said.
County officials also fall back on a number of regional studies forecasting job growth in the San Jose-Gilroy corridor, but Honaker allows that the county doesn’t have numbers to prove that demand for jets will reach South County.
Sylvia Hamilton, of the Neighborhood Alliance, says that her group’s opposition is based on that lack of information.
“I would have been really proud of the board if they had postponed a decision until they had all the information they need,” she said. But Gage counters that the point of a master plan is to predict growth and demand.
“We’re projecting the need,” he said. “That’s why you do a master plan every 20 years, because things change. It’s lot cheaper to build things in today’s dollars than it is to wait until the demand is there and you can’t meet it.”
One local group that is backing the expansion is the South County Airport Pilots Association, which says that the runway will make flying safer for pilots and surrounding communities, and reduce noise pollution.
But Rice said that an expansion that doesn’t have the support of the community will make the airport less safe. If land owners in the expanded safety zone don’t want to sell their land, he said, pilots will be forced to land their larger planes in limited airspace.
And Hamilton is concerned that Tuesday’s decision drew a bright red line around the airport that will forever damage property values whether or not the project gets off the ground.
In any event, a larger airport is still several years away. Honaker hopes to present a business plan to the board in February and get approval and funding from the FAA for an Environmental Impact Report that won’t begin before next July and could take as long as 18 months.
