Whatever the reason – interstate highway, school or airport expansion – being forced out of one’s home for the greater good of society is never pleasant.

Wednesday, March 31, 1999

Whatever the reason – interstate highway, school or airport expansion – being forced out of one’s home for the greater good of society is never pleasant. Residents in Burrwood Addition, south of the Austin Municipal Airport, put up a prolonged fight last summer against a proposed expansion of the airport runway that would remove 17 of their homes and leave the others with half a neighborhood. They lost. Now they wait.

However, those same residents have not been entirely idle since their petition for a referendum on the project failed last summer. Although there is little they can do until the city actually begins acquiring property – something City Engineer Jon Erichson predicts will begin after July of this year – some Burrwood residents spoke to a Twin Cities lawyer who specializes in cases of eminent domain acquisition.

"He said some good things," Chris Hogan said. "There’s a lot of confusion out here about what people will and won’t be paid for. I just wish we could get more answers from the city than we have. It’s very frustrating."

Originally requested by Hormel Foods Inc., who flies corporate jets in and out of the airport on a daily basis, the reasons for expansion of the current airport are twofold: safety and accessibility.

The expansion will eventually include lengthening the Austin Municipal Airport runway by 1,004 feet, bringing it to a total length of 5,800 feet and constructing needed supplementary taxi ways. With the extended runway proposal also comes extended object and obstruction free areas. Those zones have to extend far enough to accommodate landing patterns for a 5,800 foot runway and the instrumentation that is necessary for such a landing.

Since the council approved the expansion project in August, city staff have been steadily taking the steps required by federal and state agencies to obtain funding. In December the council adopted the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). In January an airport layout plan and the final draft of the Environmental Assessment (EA) document were completed. A window of opportunity for another public hearing on the EA closed earlier this month, without any requests for a hearing Erichson said.

"The hearing would only have been on the environmental statements, not on the virtues of the airport expansion," Erichson said. "That’s probably why we didn’t get any response."

Now the city awaits FAA approval on the EA and the layout plan, promised by June 30.

Until the FAA approves those plans, the Burrwood residents also wait, because the city won’t acquire their properties until the funding is in place. If and when they’re approved, Erichson said the city’s next step would be to hire a land acquisition consultant and proceed with acquisition. Erichson estimates approval by the end of June, with acquisition to begin later in the summer.

FAA airport planner Dan Millenacker, who grew up in the Austin area and works for the FAA in the Twin Cities now, said neither the EA nor the layout plan have been approved by the FAA yet, that both "are going through the process." The layout plan is with the Minnesota Department of Transportation now, who will provide the state part of the funding for the airport.

The total estimated cost of the expansion is estimated at $7.2 million, a cost which will be shared between the city, state and federal governments, if and when grants from MnDOT and the FAA come through. The city’s share is estimated at $2.2 million, although Hormel Foods Inc. has promised to pay $1 million of the city’s portion if the U.S. Congress doesn’t approve an appropriation of that same amount requested by U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht.

Neither Erichson nor Administrator Pat McGarvey knew whether Congress had acted on the transportation bill that the funding is attached to.

Phone calls to Gutknecht’s office, inquiring as to the status of the transportation bill, were not returned.