Hawthorne Airport Renovation Plans Aloft

Two years after residents voted to save Hawthorne Municipal Airport from becoming a shopping center, the city may be headed toward a long-anticipated airport upgrade.

Developers hope to complete a conceptual design for improvements to the 61-year-old general aviation facility by March. If approved by the City Council, the redevelopment would be the 80-acre airport’s first major improvement project in 20 years.

Preliminary plans include cosmetic changes such as repainting and structural renovation by winter 2004, the building of executive hangars by winter 2005 and development of the Vought Aircraft Industries property, south of the airport, into a mixed-use property, said David Wehrly of Wedgewood Enterprise Corp.

Wedgewood and two other companies, Kearny Real Estate and Howard CDM, are partners in the airport redevelopment plans. They expect to invest $200,000 to draw up a proposal in exchange for exclusive rights from the City Council to become the sole developers. The estimated cost of the project is $150 million to $200 million.

“In terms of where we are in a 10-step process, we’re probably at Step 2,” said Jeffrey Dritley, managing partner of Kearny Real Estate.

For now, the airport remains a drab relic on the city’s east side. Alongside Crenshaw Boulevard, one side of the airport’s marquee is missing, with a hole large enough for a man to crawl inside. Short of regular maintenance, such as repainting the runway, the only recent modernization has been landscaping and a mural in the airport’s courtyard.

Don Knechtel, who retired as airport manager last week, described efforts so far to upgrade the airport as slow and laborious.

Among the factors holding up the effort have been an outdated water main system and the city’s focus on other issues, such as efforts to attract retail businesses and improve garbage pickup services, Knechtel and others said. “The airport has been, shall we say, neglected over the years,” Knechtel said. “But we’ve been working on it; we’re trying to make progress as quickly as possible.”

Redevelopment projects at the airport, such as adding new hangars and buildings, could increase lease revenue by about a 15% to 20% from the $150,000 to $200,000 that Knechtel said now goes into Hawthorne’s general fund each year.

City officials said the Los Angeles County Fire Department will not consider additional construction projects until a new water line is installed under the airport. The current fire suppression system is a 4-inch-diameter water line under half the airport; a 10-inch-diameter line is the new standard.

That could cost more than $1 million, and Knechtel said he recently submitted a grant application to the Federal Aviation Administration. The earliest the water line could be in place is 2005, he said.

At the airport’s traffic peak a decade ago, more than 160,000 takeoffs and landings were recorded each year. Today, it’s roughly 70,000.

City officials say the airport’s decline had much to do with the priorities of a cash-strapped city. Hawthorne put much of its attention on the opening of a large home improvement center near the airport, and on renegotiating the city’s garbage pickup contracts earlier this year, officials said.

Councilwoman Ginny Lambert was one of the most outspoken critics of Measure A on the November 2001 ballot, which sought to close the airport and redevelop the land into a retail and hotel complex. Voters rejected the measure, 71% to 29%.

She acknowledges that upgrades have been slow in coming. Lambert, however, remains convinced that saving the airport was best for the city, and that the wait for a better facility will be worthwhile.

“We sometimes have to use the airport money to help ourselves stay afloat,” she said. “But I’m going to protect my airport as long as I can breathe.”