About 50 people recently heard a presentation that has many wondering if Paine Field will expand its commercial air traffic.
The presentation by Paine Field director Dave Waggoner discusses airport noise levels and gives the results of a study of the commercial air passenger market. The study indicates that there is enough market demand to support passenger jet service between Paine Field and West Coast airport hubs.
Members of the Mukilteo-based Paine Field Community Council who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting at the airport didn’t believe the disclaimers that the study was for information only.
“This whole process stinks,” Ben Adams of Mukilteo said. “A deal’s a deal,” he added, referring to an agreement in the 1970s between Snohomish County and adjacent communities that Paine Field would predominantly serve nonmilitary and nonpassenger flights. The county owns and operates Paine Field.
The market study was ordered by the Snohomish County Council as a follow-up to a 2002 county study that concluded Paine Field expansion could boost the area’s economy.
“The County Council wants to understand the market issues better,” Waggoner said. The study was a matter of “seeking to understand the issue rather than a marketing ploy.”
Noise levels at Paine Field have decreased dramatically in the past 20 years because of newer planes with quieter engines, airport officials said. The statistical accumulation of noise that leaves the airport over the course of the year does not even equal the sound of a normal conversation, Waggoner said.
Some individual planes, even smaller ones that now use the airport, can be noisy, Waggoner said. But “any increase in the noise footprint at the airport would be small even if commercial service is implemented,” he said.
The residents weren’t convinced.
“I don’t care what the numbers are, I don’t care what the studies say,” Phil Salditt of Mukilteo said. “It will drive home values down. I don’t know how much, but it certainly isn’t going to drive them up.”
Waggoner said the county has no firm information that home values would be affected by commercial traffic at Paine Field. He said the airport is recruiting a panel of real estate agents to study noise data and provide input.
Residents’ suspicions also were raised because Hilton is building a new hotel near the airport and nearby Beverly Park Road soon will be widened to five lanes.
Officials said the hotel was inspired primarily by the planned expansion of the Boeing tour center, the county’s most popular tourist attraction. The road widening is a result of work on 777s at the Boeing plant, they said.
As part of the follow-up to the 2002 study, the airport will develop conceptual plans and estimates for new buildings that would be needed to expand commercial air service at Paine Field.
Waggoner said if the federal government were to decide that Paine Field should have commercial air traffic, the mediated role determination, as the 1970s agreement is called, would be powerless to stop it.
“We don’t have iron control over who uses the runway and when they use it,” Waggoner said.
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