Avports image
Rendering for rebuilt airport.
A proposed amendment to a 43-year agreement between the city and Tweed’s airport authority would scrap a section on eminent domain, mandate decennial performance reviews, and require the authority and the airport’s management company to study and — “to the extent feasible” — implement a passenger carbon offset program.
Those details are included in a two-page proposed amendment to an amended and restated lease and operating agreement between the city and Tweed New Haven Airport Authority.
The Board of Alders is slated to take a final vote this Thursday on the proposed 43-year accord between the city and the airport authority.
City officials close to the process expect local legislators to take up and debate this proposed two-page amendment, which is still in draft form, as part of the larger discussion Thursday night.
However the alders vote on Thursday will determine much of how the Morris Cove-based regional airport is governed and operated for the next four decades.
“The amendment seeks to address key comments raised at the City Plan Commission, Finance Committee and community meetings,” city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli told the Independent by email Tuesday when asked about the proposed amendment.
“Amendment 1, if approved, will be made part of the amended and restated lease. It’s marked draft as it would need to be entered in at second reading by the Alders.”
Paul Bass photo
Avports CEO Jorge Roberts and Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon.
Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon said that the airport authority is on board with the proposed amendment as well.
“Yes, we do support the amendment and it’s a reflection of months of listening and conversations with the neighbors, Mayor Elicker, the alders (particularly Alder Decola) and the city staff,” he said by email. “I’ve said from day one that we wanted to be collaborative and responsive to concerns and I hope this amendment in addition to the refined community benefits package is proof of that.”
Scanlon said that the terms of the proposed amendment should not affect the separate, parallel 43-year agreement that the airport authority plans to strike with the Goldman Sachs-owned airport management company Avports, which has operated Tweed for two decades.
This spring, Avports announced plans to invest $70 million in private funds into building a new four-to-six-gate terminal on the East Haven side of the property and lengthening the airport’s main runway to 6,635 feet. It also plans to invest $5 million into traffic, noise and environmental mitigation in the surrounding neighborhoods. (Click here to read a new, detailed overview of how that $5 million is slated to be spent.)
“Both Avports and the Authority are on the same page when it comes to striving to be good neighbors and address community concerns as they come up,” Scanlon said.
At previous public meetings about the proposed 43-year deal, proponents have argued that Avports needs four decades to have a fighting chance at recouping its upfront investment in an airport that has bled money for years.
Critics, meanwhile, have raised concerns about the potential environmental, traffic, noise, and financial risks associated with a larger airport. They’ve also lambasted the city and the airport authority for seeking to hand over so much control of a publicly-owned service to a profit-driven private enterprise.
The Board of Alders will meet on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall to vote on the proposed 43-year deal, among a host of other legislative items.
Click here to read the two-page proposed amendment.
Click here to read the original proposed 43-year lease agreement in full.
Proposed Amendment Details
Avports
Another rendering of the future rebuilt Tweed.
The proposed amendment to the 43-year deal includes seven substantive changes to the document first submitted to the Board of Alders in early July. The Board of Alders Finance Committee unanimously endorsed the proposed agreement at the end of August.
The first proposed would remove the portion of Section 9.2 that allowed the city to take property through eminent domain and then sell that property to the airport. The new language for that section included in the proposed amendment reads, in part, “Any property acquired by the Authority or the City (on the Authority’s behalf) after the date hereof shall be in the name of the City but shall be deemed to be a part of the Leased Premises immediately upon such acquisition.”
The second proposed change deals with community concerns that a larger Tweed would be used for freight air travel.
“Recognizing that there are currently no facilities dedicated to freight at the Airport, but also recognizing that federal law would preclude the City from prohibiting use of the Airport for transportation of freight,” the proposed amendment reads, “the Authority and the City agree that, to the extent permissible under federal law, the amended and restated lease and operating agreement shall expressly prohibit the construction of new buildings or a change of use of existing buildings or other such infrastructural changes designed to accommodate the same, without the Authority first obtaining Site Plan Approval from the City Plan Commission in the usual course of the City’s business, and shall require the Authority to consult with the City prior to entering into any sublease of any portion of the Airport for the primary purpose of accommodating cargo or freight operations.”
The third proposed change concerns how frequently the airport authority and the airport management company have to check in with the city and surrounding neighbors over the course of the 43-year term.
The initial proposed agreement allowed for the city and the airport authority to review and potentially revise the agreement 20 years before it expires.
The proposed amendment would require the city and the airport authority to meet every 10 years “to consult and evaluate the quality of the Authority’s performance under this Agreement and maintenance of the Airport.” During those once-a-decade meet ups, the city and authority “will discuss whether performance revisions are appropriate.”
That section of the proposed amendment would also require the airport authority and the airport management company to hold annual community meetings every June with the “alder or alders whose district or districts encompass or abut the Airport. Such meeting shall be open to the public and allow for public comment.”
The fourth proposed change would require the airport authority to “continue to ensure that adequate flood insurance is maintained for the Airport.”
The fifth would require the city, the authority, and the airport management company to work together to “implement recommendations associated with new stormwater model together with ongoing maintenance of the Morris Creek tide gates and environmental initiatives associated with the Project with the aim of enhanced coastal flood resiliency, revisions to FEMA flood maps due to a reduced flood risk for the Airport and the surrounding neighborhood and to reduce the flood insurance premiums for homes and businesses within the flood zone.”
The sixth would require the authority to create an Environmental Stewardship Advisory Committee consisting of three New Haven residents and three East Haven residents, and to be staffed by New Haven’s Engineering Department.
And the seventh would require the airport authority and the airport management company “to study and, to the extent feasible, implement a passenger carbon offset program.”
It all seems promising, but I would like to see some more renderings of what the airport would basically look like. I imagine that there's probably more to the airport than just the building itself or where cars would park to gain access to the front entrance. I would love to see some more details.