ANN ARBOR, MI — Ann Arbor City Council members found themselves divided over a controversial proposal to extend the primary runway at the city’s airport in Pittsfield Township.
In a pair of 8-3 votes Monday, Dec. 2, council rejected going forward with the project, deciding not to approve a $618,700 engineering services contract and a grant agreement with the Michigan Department of Transportation.
The decision comes after many years of planning and debate about the project, which has gone through multiple rounds of study and has been staunchly opposed by the township and residents near the airport.
The township and a citizens group known as the Committee for Preserving Community Quality sued MDOT and the city in August, seeking to halt the project.
Township and city residents continued to speak out Monday night, reiterating concerns ranging from airplane noise to carbon emissions and air pollution from leaded fuel. Some also have been concerned about the potential for an increase in air traffic with more and bigger aircraft using the airport and the risk of planes crashing into houses, though some city officials have disputed those arguments.
Ann Arbor resident Dan Bilich, who lives northeast of the airport near Buhr Park, told council incoming planes already are loud, distracting and annoying, and some days there’s a lot of them. He was worried louder and more numerous aircraft would have a negative impact on quality of life and property values.
“When these buzzing planes and whiny business jets fly over, we have to either raise our voices a lot, or simply shut up for the 30 to 60 seconds it takes for these carbon-spewing chariots of the privileged to have their way with the skies above my neighborhood,” he said, suggesting the airport serves the wealthy at the expense of not-so-wealthy neighbors.
Matt Kulhanek, the city’s airport manager, and aviation enthusiasts have continued to make the case for the project, saying shifting the runway and extending it by 720 feet would improve safety, while making the runway compliant with current Federal Aviation Administration design standards. City Council first directed staff to pursue the project in 2007.
Other airports in the state have runways ranging from about 6,500 to 12,000 feet, while Ann Arbor’s main runway in question is only about 3,500 feet, which poses challenges, the city’s administration said last year, citing 11 overrun incidents at the airport since 1998. There also are line-of-sight issues for the FAA tower with the current orientation, officials have said.
When it came to a vote Monday, only Council Members Erica Briggs, Lisa Disch and Jon Mallek supported the project.
“Unfortunately, there remain a number of misconceptions about the airport safety improvement project,” Briggs said, saying the goal wasn’t to bring in more jets, nor did she think the changes would cause any safety risks for nearby residents.
“I recognize that some residents and neighbors don’t like the fact that the airport serves as a pilot training facility, but this activity isn’t new — it’s been a pilot training facility since 1939 and that activity won’t shift if this project is voted down,” she said.
It’s one of the oldest airports in the United States, with the first flight occurring in 1928, long before half-million to million-dollar homes were built nearby, Briggs said.
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The airport serves Class B-II aircraft, including various jets, turboprops, smaller planes and helicopters. That includes Michigan Medicine’s Survival Flight.
The airport’s classification wouldn’t have changed with the runway extension and it still would have had the smallest runway of any FAA-towered airport in Michigan, Briggs said.
“Because it has such a short runway, our airport has experienced 85% of the runway overruns at FAA-towered airports in Michigan in the last approximately 25 years,” she said.
Current conditions redirect some flights to the Willow Run Airport in the Ypsilanti area, Briggs said.
“Redirecting flights over majority Black and Latino neighborhoods where the average home value is under $200,000, because our much more affluent, white community does not wish to see or hear them, is inappropriate,” she said.
Those types of inequities and disparities exist near the Ann Arbor airport as well, responded Council Member Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, D- 3rd Ward, noting the area around the city’s Bicentennial Park where planes fly over is one of the most economically and racially diverse parts of town.
Other council members said they were taking the advice of legal counsel to not say too much because of the pending litigation, but they shared some general concerns that led them to vote against going forward with the project.
Mayor Pro Tem Travis Radina, D- 3rd Ward, said the city has a responsibility to have a cooperative dialogue with municipal neighbors on big issues that impact the region.
“On this issue, we haven’t always been good neighbors,” he said. “Tonight, we are presented with an opportunity to turn the page on a decades-old controversy and meaningfully engage our municipal partners, specifically those in Pittsfield Township.”
The city and other partners should aim to meet regional air transit and training needs in the longterm in a way that acknowledges the broader redevelopment and growth in the South State Street area and considers the highest and best use of land there, as well as the ongoing expansion and growth of Willow Run and its desire to serve the region, Radina said.
He mentioned climate impacts, quality of life for residents and the city’s interests in groundwater beneath the airport as other considerations.
Mallek, who joined council in November as a new Ward 2 representative, said he toured the airport and thought the grant-funded proposal for design, bidding and construction administration of the project was a good deal for the city.
“As we heard earlier, the actual construction phase of this project would likely cost around $10 million, with the city again footing the bill for a portion close to 5%, or somewhere around $500,000,” he said. “These funds would again come from the airport fund, not the city’s general fund.”
That would be a lot of “bang for our buck” to bring the airport up to modern safety and efficiency standards, he said.
Mayor Christopher Taylor expressed gratitude to the staff he said works to make the airport something Ann Arbor can be proud to have.
“If the current condition of the airport did not meet FAA safety criteria, the FAA would not permit its operation,” he said. “The FAA permits operations with the current runway configuration. And so from that, I conclude that that configuration does not pose an imminent safety hazard.”
Council Member Cynthia Harrison, D- 1st Ward, argued the project was incompatible with the city’s urgent goal to reduce carbon emissions.
“Private and cargo jets are some of the most carbon-intensive forms of transportation, and a longterm impact on our climate and quality of life cannot be dismissed,” she said. “While we ask residents and businesses to reduce their carbon footprints through behavioral and operational changes, to me it seems hypocritical to approve a project that would significantly increase emissions in our area.”
While an environmental impact report claimed the project would not result in substantial harm, technical assessments don’t always capture the full scope and the city should hold itself to a higher standard, Harrison said.
“Secondly, we do already have Willow Run Airport nearby, which is specifically designed to handle cargo planes,” she said. “I feel that expanding Ann Arbor’s airport for similar purposes is redundant and it creates unnecessary environmental and quality-of-life burdens.”
Council Member Chris Watson, D- 2nd Ward, said he had no reason to disagree with the federal government’s finding there would be no significant negative impact from the project.
“However, I’m not sure that a runway extension that the community was interested in pursuing more than a decade ago is something that it continues to wish to pursue,” he said.
Disch, D- 1st Ward, argued the changes would not have made the airport significantly busier or allowed larger planes, but she believed they would have improved safety and resulted in planes flying higher, reducing noise.
“If the city does not make these changes, this airport will not go away,” she added, saying it will keep operating as it does.
Council Member Dharma Akmon, D- 4th Ward, said she recognizes the benefits of the airport, but she didn’t think the benefits of the runway extension outweighed what she saw as negative impacts to residents, including noise.
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