Santa Monica Council votes to shut down airport

ARFlyer said:
If this gets any more heated I smell a Megis outcome.

I wonder if the Feds have any right to take the airport back from the city and operate it federally or with an outside company. Since the land originally was granted to the city and Douglas after the war.
Click to expand...

I'm sure if they really wanted to, they could eminent domain it.
 
ircphoenix said:
Toyota is moving from Torrance, California to Plano, Texas... and taking about 3,000 jobs with them in the process.

#1 reason for moving... housing prices. Turns out homes in Texas are 1/3 the cost of homes in LA. Paying employees the same money, and having their home buying power increase 3 times overnight is a pretty strong motivator.
Click to expand...

One thing people do not realize about SOME areas in Texas though, is that many taxes handled by other means in other States are part of property taxes in Texas.

Not saying it's bad or good, but anyone moving there should do a full analysis Net/Net and not just the house or property price.
 
denverpilot said:
One thing people do not realize about SOME areas in Texas though, is that many taxes handled by other means in other States are part of property taxes in Texas.

Not saying it's bad or good, but anyone moving there should do a full analysis Net/Net and not just the house or property price.
Click to expand...
Yeah. I found it interesting when digging a little deeper that despite home prices being a third of what they are here, overall cost of living is only 30% lower there. You'd think it would be lower than that considering mortgage/rent tends to be the #1 household budget item.
 
ircphoenix said:
Yeah. I found it interesting when digging a little deeper that despite home prices being a third of what they are here, overall cost of living is only 30% lower there. You'd think it would be lower than that considering mortgage/rent tends to be the #1 household budget item.
Click to expand...
"Everything is bigger in Texas"
 
Fearless Tower said:
I thought all you had to do to close an airport was take bulldozers to the runway....
Click to expand...

You've gotta have a lot of clout and a very large liberal metropolitan support base to pull that off. SMO just doesn't have the liberal name power. That's where Arnold parks his jets.
 
wilkersk said:
You've gotta have a lot of clout and a very large liberal metropolitan support base to pull that off. SMO just doesn't have the liberal name power. That's where Arnold parks his jets.
Click to expand...
Conservatives don't close airports? :confused2:
 
Palmpilot said:
Conservatives don't close airports? :confused2:
Click to expand...

I wouldn't go that far. But, generally speaking, closing down a busy hub of economic activity in order to turn it into a fallow field with a ribbon of paved "bike trail" around it is not something that comes to mind when I think of conservative government.
 
ChemGuy said:
... but those nut bars will go to extremes to close SMO so then can line their pocke...er create some parks (that will really turn into houses and Whole Foods)
Click to expand...

Perhaps you haven't been there, but Whole Foods is currently the closest place to eat lunch if you're doing training at American Flyers at SMO.

So at least the airport is safe from them!
 
wilkersk said:
I wouldn't go that far. But, generally speaking, closing down a busy hub of economic activity in order to turn it into a fallow field with a ribbon of paved "bike trail" around it is not something that comes to mind when I think of conservative government.
Click to expand...
Real estate developers are not who come to mind when I think of liberals.
 
denverpilot said:
You think there's a magic place where billionaires of both political cults don't own and develop real estate? LOL.
Click to expand...

I would venture to guess that most real estate developers would prefer less government and that tends to skew conservative.

Here's an example: we own a piece of land that has a building on it. We tear down the building while finalizing plans for future development. Then it rains. Now we have to mitigate the "wetlands" that exist on our property.
 
@denverpilot - @Palmpilot might be correct that the "Developers" are politically skewed to the right.

However, the "Developers" can't do much without the backing of the local politicians, and we're talking Santa Monica.... C'mon.
 
Sam D said:
I would venture to guess that most real estate developers would prefer less government and that tends to skew conservative.

Here's an example: we own a piece of land that has a building on it. We tear down the building while finalizing plans for future development. Then it rains. Now we have to mitigate the "wetlands" that exist on our property.
Click to expand...

Nah. Developers support whatever politician can make their project happen. Eminent domain, whatever.

Trump isn't really a conservative, for example. He'd use whatever government power he could buy to complete his projects.

Buffett and Soros own land and develop a lot of it too.

The concept of land development being the bailiwick of either particular political cult is laughable.

Plus you'd have to count public projects in "land development". Seen how much money roads cost? Plenty of contractors make big profits off of those projects and vote accordingly.

Whichever political cult promises more candy, or a bigger stick to beat down someone else with, the cultists will be there propping them up.
 
rolivi said:
@denverpilot - @Palmpilot might be correct that the "Developers" are politically skewed to the right.

However, the "Developers" can't do much without the backing of the local politicians, and we're talking Santa Monica.... C'mon.
Click to expand...

I've said before about the Santa Monica thing that the airport interests haven't figured out which politician(s) to bribe properly yet. Haha.

They probably don't have enough money.

The developers know which pockets to line and who's kids to give jobs to.

Doesn't really matter which politician or particular of the two political cults they do it with. They'll use whichever one is convenient at any given date.
 
I agree with Nate. This is not a partisan issue. Probably the only thing keeping Santa Monica alive, besides the federal mandate, is the fact that wealthy people actually use it as an airport. I'm guessing those people are pretty equally divided politically.
 
I was trying to make the point that airport closures are not the fault of one side or the other of the political spectrum. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
 
rolivi said:
Perhaps you haven't been there, but Whole Foods is currently the closest place to eat lunch if you're doing training at American Flyers at SMO.

So at least the airport is safe from them!
Click to expand...

It's true that there are two Whole Foods reasonably close to airport (one on Lincoln and one on National), but the Spitfire and Typhoon restaurants at the airport are both closer to American Flyers than either Whole Foods and both open for lunch.
 
As I said, Whole Foods isn't likely to be a threat to KSMO.

Before you scroll - another person stated they needed to close the airport to put in a Whole Foods. I was stating that Whole Foods is already there.

I like the airport. And I like Whole Foods. They seem to get along.
 
ARFlyer said:
If this gets any more heated I smell a Megis outcome.

I wonder if the Feds have any right to take the airport back from the city and operate it federally or with an outside company. Since the land originally was granted to the city and Douglas after the war.
Click to expand...

Two big differences from Meigs: (1) The battle over Meigs was fundamentally one between the city of Chicago and the State of Illinois, as there were no agreements with the federal government that required Meigs to stay open. Santa Monica airport is subject to legal obligations to the federal government, which the FAA is committed to enforcing. (2) Mayor Richard M. Daley had a muscular style that is foreign to Santa Monica, and had power to do things (like order city crews to tear up the runway in the middle of the night) that no one person in the Santa Monica system of government has the power to do. Santa Monica's style is to debate everything for years, with visioning groups, etc., then to file a lawsuit, then to vote to close the airport in two years, a week after the FAA ruled they have to keep the airport open for at least another seven years and a few weeks after it told a federal court they have to keep the airport open in perpetuity. Even when they decided to evict a flight school whose lease had expired and that hadn't been paying its landing fees, it took them months and they eventually ended up agreeing to pay the flight school almost half a million dollars (out of the city general fund) to walk away.

Anyway, the question of whether the federal government has a right to take the airport land, under the provisions of a 1948 agreement ending the federal government's wartime leases at the airport, is currently the subject of a suit in District Court, City of Santa Monica v. United States of America, et al., Case No. CV 13-8046-JFW (VBKx) (C.D. Cal.). Just to clarify, none of the land currently used by the airport was owned by Douglas after the war. Some of the land was used by Douglas to park airplanes or cars. But, the land actually owned by Douglas and occupied by the Douglas factory was developed into the Santa Monica Business Park.
 
RalphInCA said:
So, Richard, would YOU spend more money on trying to keep this airport open, if it were your money?
Click to expand...

I can't speak for Richard, but personally--as a resident of Santa Monica and a board member of the Santa Monica Airport Association--I am investing a great deal of my time and a fair bit of my money to keep the airport open. And, I wish that you, as a resident of "SoCal" who appears to live about 40 miles from Santa Monica--and who I expect has never had any direct involvement in the fight over Santa Monica Airport--would refrain from speaking for "most of us here in SoCal," as you purported to in an earlier post.

What the city is trying to do now is much the same as what it tried to do in early 1980s. The issues are the same, the slogans are eerily similar, and the basic strategies are similar. Last time, the city admitted defeat and signed an agreement that governed the operation of the airport for over 31 years. I firmly believe we will win again this time. If anything, the law is more strongly on our side now. With the rise of the business jet, the economic value of the airport is greater. And, with the strongly anti-development sentiment in the city, the land is less tempting as a target for developers.

The thing is, the city realizes that it probably can't close the airport. But, the council knows that there are a few hundred single-issue anti-airport voters that will turn out to vote in the council elections and that might be enough to determine who wins. So, much of what is going on is just for show, to make those voters think that the council is "doing something." If the AOPA, NBAA, etc. were to give up the fight because pro-airport folks are fooled by the same symbolic gestures from the city meant to fool the airport neighbors, that would be a sad thing indeed.

In an earlier post, you referred to delaying the inevitable. That's what life is all about. Staying healthy to delay the inevitability of death. Maintaining your airplane (or car or house) to delay the inevitable day when it must be scrapped. If you believe that the "inevitable" is a reason not to protect and enjoy what we have now, why do you bother to get out of bed in the morning?

It's not my goal to keep Santa Monica Airport open forever. It's my goal to keep it a place that we can use and enjoy today and to pass it along to the next generation--just as those who fought the fight in the 1980s kept it around to pass along to my generation. Whether it stays open after I'm gone is not my business to decide.
 
Neil Rubin said:
If the AOPA, NBAA, etc. were to give up the fight because pro-airport folks are fooled by the same symbolic gestures from the city meant to fool the airport neighbors, that would be a sad thing indeed.
Click to expand...

They already have...at least aopa -- they used to talk about it constantly...now every story is downplayed or even ignored.
 
My understanding is, the city wants to build some kind of park on the property. Is it not possible for the airport to do that with some of the land? Then if they built a park, perhaps they could convince some of the well know celebrities that base at the airport to taxi over in something other than a 50 million dollar biz jet, or helicopter to meet and greet and maybe sign autographs. The purpose would be to explain why the airport is a good thing and how great flying really can be.

It's easy to sell the idea of getting rid of airplane noise and the potential death threat from the sky to the non flying public. It seems that there isn't a very good PR campaign to keep the airport that resonates with the non flying public. The advantage Santa Monica has over other airports in the country is, they have well known celebrities there.
 
Ryanb said:
In time SMO will just be a distant memory like Meigs, such a shame.

Live by an airport and complain about the noise to try and get it excavated..what about the folks who live next to railroad tracks, will complaining about that get those removed too? What if a train derails and ends up coming through someone's back door? :stirpot:
Click to expand...

Not so much in the mountains. We're reminded every time the Cal Fire planes take off how important the airport is...
 
Palmpilot said:
Real estate developers are not who come to mind when I think of liberals.
Click to expand...

Real estate developers aren't what come to mind when I think of making "green-space" out of airports. But, the socks-n-sandal socialist "I-know-best" types are.
 
wilkersk said:
Real estate developers aren't what come to mind when I think of making "green-space" out of airports. But, the socks-n-sandal socialist "I-know-best" types are.
Click to expand...
timwinters said:
Hmmm. Dr. Bruce is a socialist? I would've never guessed it! :goofy:
Click to expand...
Are you saying that Dr. Bruce wants to make green space out of airports? :confused2:
 
ircphoenix said:
The city is a lost cause. All they see is developer dollars. Being able to throw more developers and high rise buildings into SMO is a boon to them. Does nothing beneficial for the residents, as the city already suffers from some horrendous traffic problems. But methinks suddenly those councilmembers will be able to afford a brand new unit in a high rise development that gets approved due to no longer being around an airport.
Click to expand...

Make it expensive for them. Take some samples and turn it into a hazardous waste site but not a superfund site. If the city is forced to pay to clean up their mess, all those developer dollars might not be valuable enough to spend anymore. Maybe it would be better to just keep it as an airport, wouldn't cost as much.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top