Waiting game for airport expansion

TAKING FLIGHT: Joe Piscopio, owner of Iron Works Tavern in Warwick, thinks the City Council is hindering business by fighting the expansion of the T.F. Green Airport. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
TAKING FLIGHT: Joe Piscopio, owner of Iron Works Tavern in Warwick, thinks the City Council is hindering business by fighting the expansion of the T.F. Green Airport. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

To Iron Works Tavern owner Joseph Piscopio, the expansion of T.F. Green Airport’s main runway makes too much economic sense not to happen. So why continue to waste money fighting it?
“I think the area will boom,” said Piscopio, whose restaurant is across the street from a new InterLink train station on Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick that serves the airport. “Direct flights are what it is all about. No one wants to stop over.”
That’s why he and many other business leaders in and out of the city have grown weary and frustrated by the many hurdles that have delayed the airport’s long-sought expansion plan – including the latest – a federal court appeal by the Warwick City Council.
“We have been talking about the necessity of lengthening the runway for a decade now and the airport’s competitive disadvantage for a decade,” said Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce President Laurie White after hearing of the appeal. “We thought we had come to the end of the line when the (Federal Aviation Administration) issued the final statements and approved the master plan.”
“Disappointing” was the word used by the Chamber and the Rhode Island Building and Trades Council in a joint statement about the appeal, while “frustrated” was the description from R.I. Airport Corporation CEO Kevin Dillon.
“These are straw men that are being thrown out,” Dillon said about arguments from councilors that the airport’s $200 million construction plans are vague and don’t provide necessary legal protection for the community. “The City Council sat on its hands and did not come back with any suggested language, concerns or any additional items. It is kind of hollow for them to sit there today and say it lacks specificity.”
The appeal, which could last up to three years if there is no settlement, has brought the expansion project to a halt at a time when Dillon said T.F. Green’s short runways are a leading contributor to the airport’s persistent decline in passengers.
“It keeps us at a competitive disadvantage in this industry – airlines are being subjected to weight penalties,” Dillon said, referring to the fact that many planes leave T.F. Green at less than full capacity because of the short runway. “I believe some airlines have left because of this issue. The reality here is over time we have become an inefficient place for airlines.” The expansion plans, approved by the FAA in late September, would extend T.F. Green’s main runway by 1,530 feet, build new cargo and postal facilities, add on to the passenger terminal, move the crosswind runway to the north and make a number of safety improvements.
When the work is complete, the airport hopes the longer runway will not only allow planes to take off at full capacity, but attract more airlines and direct flight to the West Coast and beyond.
The FAA estimates that the expansion project would directly create more than 700 jobs over the next eight years and indirectly create 1,200 jobs as a result of $130 million in new spending throughout the area.
But because airport-improvement projects have been a headache in Warwick for decades and the current project involves seizing about 100 homes and a dozen businesses plus relocating city streets and a field, the issue has divided the community.
Despite the state and federal spending the project will pump into the economy, not all businesses in Warwick are happy about a larger T.F. Green. The closer they are to it, in fact, the more likely they are to be apprehensive.
“It’s taken two generations and they took the neighborhood away and ruined our business,” said Stephen Russo Jr., whose family owns Gilmore Furniture on Post Road just north of the airport. “I would be happy if they did something to bring in people, not just to the airport. This isn’t going to help us.”
In a sign of how divisive the airport expansion issue is, the Warwick-based Central Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce has declined to take a position on the project because of differing opinions among members.
The most vocal opponent of the project, Warwick City Councilor Steve Merolla, said he welcomes a bigger, modernized airport that boosts the state economy – but wants the airport to agree to put down in writing exactly when and how they are going to do it. Merolla’s problems lie with a proposed agreement between the city and airport that was supposed to provide some certainty to the community by spelling out the various steps and mitigation measures involved in the project.
The proposed agreement, voted down by the council more than a year ago, leaves too many specifics in the project to the discretion of the airport, Merolla said.
“The last two times they expanded it took 14 years to do what they said they would,” Merolla said.
The agreement asked the council to waive any appeals and Merolla said filing the court appeal was the only way the city would get a chance to be heard before the project went too far to change.
Dillon rejects the argument that the airport is holding out on the city and says most of the information Merolla is seeking either can’t be known at this stage of planning or depends on decisions from parties other than the airport.
Deciding the city had little chance of winning an appeal, Mayor Scott Avedisian, who fought for years with the airport to get local protections, did not join the legal challenge.
One thing all sides seem to agree on is that Green has not become the growing economic engine state leaders hoped it would 10 years ago.
In October, the airport’s year-over-year passenger count dropped 3.9 percent from the same period in 2010. Since 2007, when the airport served 5 million people, total passenger counts have fallen annually. 2010 saw 3.9 million passengers use the airport.
But in industries such as construction that still have not recovered from the recession, the prospect of a large new building project and the spending it will bring to the economy make it too attractive to delay.
“It’s time for us to commit to the complete transformation of T.F. Green,” said Michael F. Sabitoni, president of the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council. •

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