New Tweed Boss To Neighbors: Trust Me

The new director of Tweed-New Haven Airport asked for East Shore neighbors’ trust after two decades of feeling hoodwinked.

In his third week on the job, which he said he was advised not to take, Sean Scanlon came out to listen to about 80 Morris Cove residents at a Wednesday night meeting at Nathan Hale School.

At the start, he gave out his personal cell phone number, committed to walk the neighborhood and asked not to be blamed for whatever happened in the past. He said he might not know much about how to manage an airport, but he said he knew a lot about how to listen after a career in politics.

State Sen. Martin Looney, State Rep. Al Paollilo and Morris Cove Alder Jody Ortiz all showed up, too.

The latest showdown over the airport comes as a team of consultants from McFarland-Johnson, Inc., are developing Tweed’s next master plan, which will be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration to justify any changes to the airport.

Expected to be completed in March 2021, the plan will look at every aspect of the airport, from the number of parking spaces to the location of the taxiway, said Jeffrey Wood, the consultancy’s regional director of aviation. He added that the length of the runway, the size of the terminal and the continued use of the cross-runway are likely the three biggest issues.

The last master plan, completed in 2002, suggested expanding Tweed’s runway by 400 feet, but that never happened.

A federal appellate court has given the airport the go-ahead to expand, saying that federal aviation safety laws precede the state’s restrictions, but Attorney General William Tong is appealing that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Boosters say that a longer runway could finally bring more flights in, possibly to Chicago or Washington, D.C. (Currently, only American Airlines runs three flights a day to Philadelphia and one flight on Saturdays to Charlotte.) Opponents argue that would mean louder jets and clogged streets for Morris Cove residents and possible environmental dangers in a flood-prone part of the city.

After their 20-minute presentation, the consultants asked audience members what questions they had about the process.

The first few sounded like clips from a Congressional hearing: a long, prefatory speech leading up to a pointed question.

Marvin Saunders, a Hamden resident who said there’s ​“a huge, pent-up demand” for a regional airport on the scale of the one in Westchester, N.Y., asked about the projected number of passengers interested in flying out of Tweed.

Claudia Bosch, a Lighthouse Road homeowner, said that the 2002 master plan used ​“voodoo economics” to claim that Tweed would bring the area tens of millions of dollars annually. She asked how much New Haven is losing in property taxes from the neighborhood’s low valuations.

Soon, speakers did away with that formality and ripped into the airport, telling Scanlon, who’s also a state representative for Branford and Guilford, about betrayals going back more than a decade.

They said their windowsills are blackened by exhaust, their sleep interrupted by roaring turbines, and their streets jammed with Uber drivers. They said Yale benefits while their home values decline. They asked if it was better to expand the airfield at Sikorsky in Stratford.

With this new master plan, ​“we’re talking about setting a foundation. Two words come to mind: trust and respect,” said Susan Campion. ​“In our experience, the city extends a hand, then takes a quick left sock to your eye.”

“It’s like our community has been abused,” she went on. ​“We are willing to look at just making this airport better, but not necessarily bigger.”

Ed Fitzgerald said he felt ​“aggravated.” He said that Tim Larson, the airport’s former executive director, ​“stood right here and lied to us” in 2009. At the time, the city struck a deal with East Haven, which includes part of the airport’s land, to allow unpaved safety areas beyond the runway — in an agreement Mayor Toni Harp terminated earlier this year. The deal included a promise by New Haven and airport officials never to seek another extension.

“I asked him right out, sitting right here, ​‘Does this mean they could never lengthen the runway?’ He said, ​‘That’s exactly what it means,’” Fitzgerald said. ​“At the time, most of the neighborhood said, ​‘This is a Trojan horse, it’s a way for them to extend the runway.’ This is exactly what’s happening now.”

“Mr. Scanlon, I’ve never met you before,” Fitzgerald went on, but ​“I hope you have more integrity than he did. From here on, going forward, I’m sure you’re going to try to push things, but you’ve still got a whole court decision you’ve got to get by before you can do anything.”

As a consultant tried to move on to the next question, Scanlon thanked Fitzgerald for his comments and asked him for a one-on-one meeting.

“I obviously wasn’t here 10 years ago. I know you were, and I respect that,” Scanlon said.

“I’m not judging you at all,” Fitzgerald cut in. ​“It’s what people have been through.”

“I understand that,” Scanlon continued. ​“I know that a lot of people in this room have been at this for a long time. You’ve been here for a lot longer than I have. I just don’t have that context and history here. What I can control is what we’re going to do going forward.”

So what exactly is that? Michael Moscowitz asked later on. What’s the projected runway length that airlines have been asking for? ​“Please don’t tell me you don’t know because I already know you know,” he said. ​“How long do you want to make it?”

“We don’t know,” Wood said, to jeers from the audience. ​“We haven’t gotten that far in the study: How heavy is the aircraft? What type is it? Where is it going? How much fuel does it have on board?”

“You could not have come to this meeting without knowing that. Without it, we can’t intelligently talk to you about this,” Moscowitz said. ​“You’re just here for public relations.”

“The point of this meeting was to get information about what you would like us to address,” Wood responded.

“You’re going to stand there and tell us, ​‘Trust me, trust me,’” Moscowitz said. ​“That’s utter nonsense.”

Scanlon stepped in, taking the microphone to see if he could give a clearer answer.

He said that three airlines had told him personally that the wanted a 6,000-foot runway, though others had said they’d prefer a 7,000-foot runway.

Which airlines? Moscowitz asked.

“We get approached all the time by different air carriers. Some of them are real; some of them are not,” Scanlon said. ​“I can’t divulge that exact information to you.”

“You said to trust you,” Moscowitz said.

“I will tell you as much as I can without violating any sort of proprietary information with the companies,” Scanlon said. ​“Trust me that I’m going to answer your question if I can answer your question.”

Which airlines? Moscowitz repeated.

“I just said to you, if I can tell you the answer, I’m going to look you in the eye and tell you the answer,” Scanlon said. ​“All I can tell you is that there are different options on the table and all of those are going to be considered as part of this master plan process.”

Scanlon promised by morning to send Moscowitz a list of all the planes that could land on a 7,000-foot runway.

After listening to the back-and-forth, even some newcomers to the East Shore said they felt unsure if they could trust Scanlon. They pointed out that it had been years since the airport revisited its noise exposure maps, which are used to determine which homes qualify for free sound-proofing. And they said that the airport had broken its previous promises about the runway length.

Angelina Carnevale, who moved to South End Road five years ago, said wants to be ​“pro-airport,” but is having a hard time finding reasons to justify it. The economic development arguments meant ​“nothing” to her, she said, as a person who already has a job but has to plug her ears every time she walks outside her house.

“I’m not sure Tweed is being a good neighbor, and I want to know how they’re going to plan on being a good neighbor,” she said. ​“There’s a lot of information that I’m getting from both sides. I want to know what’s real and what hasn’t happened that should have.”