Master plan for airport unveiled

By Jeanette DeForge

05/13/2008- The Republican

CHICOPEE - Five weeks after its major carrier went out of business, Westover Metropolitan Airport officials unveiled a 20-year plan last night that calls for doubling the size of the passenger terminal and renovating at least one hanger.

Designing a master plan began before Skybus Airlines opened the first commercial passenger service at the airport in decades, said Allan W. Blair, president and chief executive officer of Westover Metropolitan Development Corp., owner of the airport.

It is a routine requirement of all airports to have a 20-year plan, and a new one is due, he told about a dozen residents who attended the meeting.
 
"It gives us an opportunity to look around" and decide how to plan for the future, he said.

The master plan, for example, identified where a cargo facility would be located if a cargo carrier ever approached airport officials with a proposal to locate there, Blair said.

The entire plan, which also includes maintenance needs, would cost $56.6 million to complete, said Laurie K. Cullen, associate vice president of HNTB Corp. of Boston which was hired to help write the plan.

Money could come from a variety of sources, including the Federal Aviation Administration, small federal and state grants, the Western Massachusetts Development Corp. and private entities, she said.

For now the priority would be to expand and improve the air passenger terminal, which measures 14,000 square feet and is inadequate to meet today's security and other needs, Blair said.

Already there have been discussions about expanding it to 25,000 or 30,000 square feet, funding that and other improvements with a $15 million bond.

"Our second (priority) would be to rehab one of our hangars to help the maintenance industry," he said.

There are several large hangars on the property built by the neighboring Westover Air Reserve Base when it was a larger active duty base. Those hangars could be used to attract companies interested in doing aircraft repairs and maintenance, Blair said.

Residents who attended expressed concerns about air traffic flying in late at night or early in the morning, but most of their questions were about recent plans to purchase homes in Granby that are in the noisiest part of the flight path.

Blair said the master plan does not call for more planes to fly at night, but said it may happen occasionally.

The home purchases came from a 1988 plan to mitigate noise from civilian and military aircraft. The FAA has agreed to buy homes most impacted by the noise and raze them, he said.

People are not required to sell their homes, but neighbors said they are concerned about how the plan will impact their neighborhood and the value of homes not sold.