Thomas Breen file photo
At Tweed for Avelo's first flight to Puerto Rico, last November.
Temporary office, ticketing, and passenger-waiting trailers can stay for another three years on Tweed’s New Haven side — as the regional airport works to build up a new terminal in East Haven by 2027.
Three City Plan Commission members took that unanimous vote last Wednesday during a special online meeting of the local land-use body.
They voted to grant a 36-month extension to an existing Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance (FDPO) variance “to permit non-floodproofed temporary modular trailers below the Base Flood Elevation” at 51 South End Rd., Uriah Street, South End Road, Morris Causeway, 191 Burr St., and a handful of other addresses that comprise Tweed New Haven Airport.
The variance — granted with a number of city staff-approved conditions — allows the airport’s private operator, Avports, to keep in place five mobile trailer buildings and five anchored trailer buildings that have been in place on the Morris Cove airport’s New Haven side since 2021. Those temporary buildings provide waiting space for airline passengers, storage space for mechanical equipment, and office space for the budget airline Avelo.
As Avports-hired attorney Joe Williams explained last Wednesday, the airport operators needed an extension for a variance that the City Plan Commission approved for these very same trailers back in September 2021. That original variance came with a term of three years, and therefore is set to expire.
The September 2021 approval also came right as the budget airline Avelo made New Haven its East Coast hub and kicked off what would become three years of expansion, adding more than two dozen direct flights from New Haven – and enticing a second airline, Breeze, to come in and try to compete for Tweed airplane customers.
“This is a renewal only. It’s not a new application. We’re not proposing to change anything” about the location or use or number of trailers currently in place, Williams said about last Wednesday’s application. “It’s rather just to simply continue doing what we’re doing now.”
This three-year extension, he continued, should allow the airport operators enough time to pull all the necessary permits and actually build a planned new larger terminal on the East Haven side of the property.
“The new east terminal project is taking a little longer than we had hoped,” Williams said. So Avports needs these temporary structures in place for a few more years “as the process plays out.”
Since that initial September 2021 variance approval for these trailers, Avports spokesperson Andrew King said, the airport operators came to a 43-year lease and expansion deal with the public airport authority. The federal government also completed its Environmental Assessment (EA) of the airport expansion plans, and, as of December 2023, granted a Finding of No Significant Impact for the estimated $165 million project.
King said Avports is now working with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to “move things forward” for relevant permit applications for the East Haven terminal.
He said they expect to submit the DEEP applications this fall, and “get all the way through” that permitting process by late summer 2025. After that will come more permit applications and reviews with FEMA and the Town of East Haven.
King said the airport operators hope to begin construction on the new East Haven terminal by the fall of 2025, and complete construction by the spring or summer of 2027.
“We are full throttle to move this forward so that [these trailers] are temporary and we can meet that three-year expectation,” King said.
The commission then spent roughly two hours hearing from members of the public concerned about how these trailers might fare amid the threat of increased flooding, among other concerns.
“There’s a lot of concern” about “toxic” runoff from these trailers into Morris Creek, East Haven resident Dana Walker said. “I don’t think this commission actually understands chemical data.”
Another East Havener, Patrick Rowland, argued that the trailers shouldn’t be called temporary if they stay for the duration of another three-year variance. “Six years is no longer temporary,” he said. He criticized the commissioners for turning down two “intervenor” requests earlier in the night, by himself and fellow East Havener Lorena Venegas, who both urged the commission to reject the variance. “I really think you guys have completely missed the boat on all of this,” he said.
After the public testimony section of the meeting, City Plan Commissioner and Westville Alder Adam Marchand pressed the Avports team on the timeline for the East Haven terminal project.
“This project has not moved as quickly as applicants have hoped,” he noted. If Avports isn’t able to build the new terminal on the East Haven side by 2027 as currently planned, then they might come back before the commission for another variance extension — which, if granted, would mean that the trailers could be in place for a total of nine years instead of the originally envisioned three. And can they really be called “temporary” structures if they’re in place for nine years?
King assured Marchand that, with Avports, “you have an applicant that is very determined to get through this project, and very determined to get through in a timely manner.”
He said Avports is already working with “all of the relevant agencies, and building out our expected timelines based on our work with those agencies.”
The past three-year timeline played out before Avports could “start on any of the work” with the FAA, DOT, and DEEP, he said, given that it first had to prioritize the airport authority agreement and then the environmental assessment. Now, he said, “is a very different time” than three years ago.
“While it is impossible to say exactly what will happen” over the next three years, he repeated, Avports is “very determined,” is working closely with the relevant regulatory agencies, and is basing its current timeline for the new terminal of of its work with those agencies.