The closing of Santa Monica

[scottcolbath]

I really don't understand how this can happen. I mean, I know it happens, but what the hell?

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-santa-monica-airport-20170128-story.html

S.C.

[Jay Beckman]

Follow The Money...

[Jeff D. Welker]

The money will lead you to an influential group of well-healed neighbors that don't like the airport.  They've got the cash to keep the thing in litigation and buy-off the City Council.  It doesn't happen fast, but if they keep it up year after year, the airport will ultimately lose.  Even if they hadn't been able to buy votes to close the airport, they would have bled the City of Santa Monica dry with never ending law suits.

In this day and age, every muni airport needs a full-time PR staff to engender, maintain, and expand neighborhood relationships.  All the security walls and fencing doesn't help either.  It makes the airport seem like it a cold fortress and isn't part of the community.  Over the long haul, this isn't just a cranky neighbor problem.  This problem can also be laid at the feet of the airport management and their arrogance.  They correctly say they were there first and everyone else should have known better.  But they forget that they lengthened the runway(s) to accommodate private jet traffic and the money that type of commerce represents.  That can be a substantial change for the neighbors.  My beloved Falcon Field is under increasing pressure from the neighbors.  Unless Falcon's management becomes much more proactive than they are now, it will only get worse, not better.

[scottcolbath]

The money will lead you to an influential group of well-healed neighbors that don't like the airport.  They've got the cash to keep the thing in litigation and buy-off the City Council.  It doesn't happen fast, but if they keep it up year after year, the airport will ultimately lose.  Even if they hadn't been able to buy votes to close the airport, they would have bled the City of Santa Monica dry with never ending law suits.

In this day and age, every muni airport needs a full-time PR staff to engender, maintain, and expand neighborhood relationships.  All the security walls and fencing doesn't help either.  It makes the airport seem like it a cold fortress and isn't part of the community.  Over the long haul, this isn't just a cranky neighbor problem.  This problem can also be laid at the feet of the airport management and their arrogance.  They correctly say they were there first and everyone else should have known better.  But they forget that they lengthened the runway(s) to accommodate private jet traffic and the money that type of commerce represents.  That can be a substantial change for the neighbors.  My beloved Falcon Field is under increasing pressure from the neighbors.  Unless Falcon's management becomes much more proactive than they are now, it will only get worse, not better.

Right, yet at the same time those well-heeled neighbors don't give a rat's ass about those living around any airport they may frequent. This is why our country is going to hell. People only care about their own little world, not the rest of it around them.

S.C.

[John S]

I drive a truck for Safeway and we deal with the same thing with some of our stores.  The store could be there long before any houses were there and then people move in and complain about the reefer noise in the early morning hours.  Then the store gets a curfew where we cannot deliver between 10 pm and  6 am. More cases of as George Carlin said, NIMBY, not in my back yard.  Also, one of my sister in laws purchased a house in El Mirage around Cactus and El Mirage, she had to sign something that she wouldn't complain or sue about the jets from Luke, her house is almost in line with the runways if you follow the path long enough going north.   

[Jay Beckman]

And unfortunately Jeff, based on first-hand experience, FFZ still really doesn't "get it."

They can rest on their (meaningful) history all they like, but in the long run, that won't keep the wolf from the door.