Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Runway fighting ends after 25 years - Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Fasten your seat belts, bring your chairs to an upright position and stow your carry-ons. A new, sloped, high-rise runway is coming to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Broward County commissioners Tuesday agreed to put to rest 25 years of local infighting over expansion of the busy airport, settling longstanding lawsuits with the city of Dania Beach, neighbor of the soon-to-be flight strip.

Even those in South Florida who never fly will see the runway, a feat in modern engineering.

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Its unusual design slopes it upward to 65 feet high, the rough equivalent of a six-story building. Drivers on busy U.S. 1/Federal Highway will pass beneath it. Trains chugging on the Florida East Coast Railway will travel under it, too.

The 8,000 foot-long, east-west flight strip on the south side of the airport will slope gradually until it abruptly ends, like a cliff.

Airplanes won't land close to the edge, aviation authorities have assured. They'll touch down about 1,500 feet west of the concrete edge.

While county officials recoiled at the design when they first saw it last year, calling it amusement-park-like, they've since accepted it.

The county's airport consultants and staff complained that tiny drawings of the runway exaggerate the steepness. One consultant said a wheelchair ramp is six times steeper, and exhibited how a water bottle on a table with this same slope wouldn't fall over.

The maximum slope allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration is 1.5 percent, consultants said. The proposed runway is sloped at 1.3 percent. That means for every 100 feet of runway, the runway is 1.3 feet taller, an almost imperceptible rise.

The $791 million runway won't be the only sloped runway in the country. There are sloped runways in Las Vegas and Seattle, for example.

Still, it will be a spectacle in Broward, where the main runway on the airport's north side isn't part of the skyline.

The sloped runway will be a second main runway, allowing large commercial jets to take off or depart on either or both, instead of just one.

Broward Aviation Director Kent George said it's "desperately needed'' for timely and safe air travel, and is one of the FAA's highest priority expansions.

Tuesday, Broward commissioners hired a company to build the structures over U.S. 1 and the railroad tracks, a $179.9 million job to be done by Tutor Perini Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Venture, the first of four major contracts for this project.

Meanwhile, the settlement with Dania is expected to cost $175 million. In the deal, already approved by long-fighting Dania elected officials, 857 Dania homeowners will be eligible for cash payments equal to 20 percent of their home value, if they remain in their homes. If they sell, the airport would help make up for lost home value if the sales price is low. About 1,700 homes will be soundproofed, too, for up to $80,000 per home, under the settlement. The county gives Dania $6.3 million worth of land, and $100,000, and sells other land in Dania to return it to the tax rolls.

Flights on the new runway will not be allowed from 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

The deal goes to the Federal Aviation Administration next for signoff.

Even Broward Commissioner John Rodstrom, who represents Dania, voted yes. He was opposed to the runway, but said Tuesday that he'd vote for the settlement, hoping the county can offer more to Dania homeowners, after the FAA approves it.

Broward Commissioner Lois Wexler, another "no'' vote when the runway was approved in June 2007, said she was on the losing end, and "some people think they lost. But you know what? You move on. … That's what democracy is all about.''

As far back as 1986, the Sun Sentinel chronicled opposition to a new runway, and as long ago as then, Dania residents who'd moved next to an airport nevertheless said their plight was unexpected, because the airport grew "like a cancer.''

George, who has been screamed at, reminded of the Bible's admonition not to steal and blamed for ruining people's lives and destroying their home values, has said construction of the runway in the coming two years will be the easiest part. Settling the fighting was the toughest.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com

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