May 17--Some Millcreek Township property owners are finally receiving the phone calls that could lead them out of limbo.
"Limbo" is a term used often by those property owners who have been waiting for years to hear when -- or if -- their respective homes and businesses would be acquired to make way for the planned 1,900-foot-long extension of Erie International Airport's main runway.
That wait should be nearly over, Airport Executive Director Kelly Fredericks said Tuesday.
Airport consultants started contacting businesses in the path of the $53 million runway extension on Tuesday.
Some homeowners will be called today.
"I think it's about time," West 13th Street resident Jack Flanagan said. "A lot of people's lives have been placed on hold until they hear what the airport is going to do."
The full picture of what will happen next will be presented Thursday during a news conference scheduled for 10 a.m. in the airport's baggage-claim area. Airport officials and consultants are expected to outline what homes and businesses are to be acquired first and when that will happen.
Five businesses, seven homes and three vacant properties are expected to be part of the first phase, or "zone."
Nineteen houses, six businesses and 103 mobile homes are expected to be acquired to make way for the runway extension, with another 16 homes listed as optional acquisitions.
Russ Halmi, owner of Tri-Penn Tool Co., 1413 Marshall Drive, said he received his long-awaited call from an airport consultant on Tuesday.
Halmi is familiar with the term "limbo." He has put off expanding his company on Marshall Drive because of the uncertainty of when the facility would be acquired.
Halmi said he was told his building was in acquisition zone No. 2, and he should be contacted by December.
"I would just as soon go tomorrow," he said.
Airport officials several times before appeared ready to begin talking to property owners, only to delay those plans as the project was forced to jump more regulatory hurdles.
William Petit, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation district executive for the northwestern district, told Airport Authority members Tuesday that the airport portion of the regulatory approval process took much longer and was much more complex than anyone anticipated.
PennDOT got regulatory approval for the highway projects to support the runway extension in December 2003, Petit said, adding the expectation was that the airport clearance would soon follow.
But the regulatory process for the airport's part of the work --complicated by wetlands, a public golf course and a reclaimed Superfund waste site -- proved much more time-consuming. Officials did not receive that clearance until two years later, in December 2005.
