Morrisville Wants to Let People Live Closer to RDU. The Airport Worries About Noise.

Oct. 21—MORRISVILLE — Morrisville's population has more than doubled since 2009, even though residential development has been prohibited in a large chunk of the town closest to Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Now the town is considering allowing developers to build apartments and condos in much of what it calls the Airport Overlay District, and that has raised objections from RDU. Airport officials worry that allowing people to live too close to the runways will set up future conflicts, and perhaps even lawsuits, over noise.

The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, the airport's governing board, sent a letter to the town council last week expressing its "strong opposition" to changing the town's land-use plan to allow residential development in the airport district.

"The proposed changes to the AOD as currently recommended are incompatible with airport operations, could expose the authority and the town to future legal and financial risks, and have the potential to incite backlash from the community," Airport Authority chairman John Kane wrote.

Morrisville officials say they recognize the airport's concerns and are hoping for some sort of compromise that works for both sides.

"RDU's extremely important to the town. It's the reason for a lot of the town's success," Brad West, Morrisville's senior planner, told town council members this month. "We want to work with them. But we also have our own town goals that we're trying to accomplish."

Morrisville's Airport Overlay District extends from Interstate 40, southwest of RDU's parallel commercial runways, to beyond N.C. 54, covering about a third of the town. Raleigh has a similar zone north of the airport.

The Morrisville district is close not only to the airport but also to two I-40 interchanges, and much of it has been turned into office parks, hotels, restaurants and other businesses. But large pieces of land remain open, and it's the future of those tracts that prompted the town to look at residential development.

Town officials say the contours of the overlay district were based on what is now outdated information about the noise created by airplanes. The size of the district reflects where people on the ground could expect to hear airplane noise at 65 decibels or above, a threshold set by the Federal Aviation Administration for recommending limits on development.

But the noise estimates were made in 1992; planes are much quieter now, West said, and they take off and land in narrower flight paths. A noise study in 2014 put the 65-decibel zone north of I-40, making the entire Airport Overlay District available for residential development by FAA standards.

"If we were just to go by FAA guidelines, we would completely eliminate the Airport Overlay District," Michele Stegall, the town's planning director, said in an interview.

Instead, the town is proposing to maintain the overlay district and the ban on housing in the area closest to the airport, along Airport Boulevard as far south as Trans Air Drive. The rest of the district would be opened up to multi-family residential development but not single-family homes.

That's in part, West said, because the town would like to see denser housing along future transit corridors, including the path of a planned commuter rail line near N.C. 54 and a planned transit-oriented development district near the Wake Tech Community College campus. In addition, the completion of McCrimmon Parkway between Airport Boulevard and Aviation Parkway earlier this year has provided access to large areas of undeveloped land that could become a mix of apartments, offices and retail.

West said the town would require developers to use better insulation, doors and windows to reduce noise inside apartments, reducing the chances that residents would be bothered by planes.

RDU wants to avoid 'costly legal battles'

RDU doesn't want to take a chance that future residents in the overlay district will tolerate airplane noise. In his letter to the town, Kane cites airports in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego and Seattle that have been sued over noise, and said "RDU cannot afford to engage in similar costly legal battles."

RDU has first-hand experience with noise lawsuits. After American Airlines opened a hub at the airport in 1987, more than 100 residents sued, claiming the increased noise made their property less valuable. The airport spent $1.8 million to settle the lawsuits.

In his letter, Kane said the airport will recover from the decline in air travel caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to grow in the coming years and decades. Eroding the restrictions in Morrisville's Airport Overlay District would be short-sighted, he wrote.

"Properly developed noise overlay zones, like those in the vicinity of RDU, are designed to anticipate future noise impacts so that incompatible development does not creep in closer to the airport in a manner that local governments and area residents come to regret," Kane wrote. "Communities that reduce the size of the airport overlay district are virtually ensuring that they will be subjected to contentious community pressure in coming years."

Noise already an issue for some airport neighbors

As it is, RDU receives seven to 15 calls and emails a day on average about airport-related noise, according to spokeswoman Stephanie Hawco. About half come from residents commenting on existing noise levels, while the rest are from real estate agents or prospective home buyers asking what to expect.

"The number of calls spike when cloud coverage increases noise perception or there is unusual activity at the airport, such as a military exercise," Hawco wrote in an email.

Morrisville officials still hope they can find a way to satisfy RDU's concerns while allowing housing in the overlay district. Ellis Cayton, RDU's director of planning and environmental programs, served on a town land-use plan advisory committee, and town manager Martha Paige sent airport president Michael Landguth a letter inviting him to meet for a "deeper dive into some of the remaining issues."

"We have invited RDU to come in and talk to town council to try to work through the issue with them," said Stegall, the planning director. "We want to be a good neighbor."

T.J. Cawley, Morrisville's mayor, echoes that thought, stressing that no decisions have been made. Cawley said he understands the airport's position.

"They're just doing their job; that's their role," he said in an interview. "Even though they don't have any control over what we do, they do have influence."

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