VAN NUYS AIRPORT GIVES PROP PLANES THEIR OWN PARK.

Byline: LISA MASCARO Staff Writer

The propeller planes that have been the heart and soul of Van Nuys Airport since the early days - but have been increasingly squeezed out by more lucrative jets - will soon have a home of their own.

The city-run airport has agreed to set aside 34 acres off Balboa Boulevard for a prop-plane park, an agreement that comes none too soon for the small-plane community that has seen its numbers dwindle to half what they were a generation earlier.

"They've extended an olive branch by moving into the prop park," Elliot L. Sanders, president of the Van Nuys Propeller Aircraft Association, said of the Los Angeles World Airports, the city's airport department. "I see it not only as an olive branch, but a step in the right direction."

LAWA recently unveiled schematic plans for the prop park, which would house up to 259 small aircraft - nearly half the propeller planes currently at the airport - at Balboa, between Saticoy Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard, the site of the former Air National Guard facility.

LAWA is seeking a contractor for an estimated $10 million job to demolish the facility by mid-2007. It plans to develop the site by 2009, with hangars, tie-downs, a wash rack and vehicle parking spaces.

Under the deal hammered out in the airport's 20-year master plan, which won final City Council approval earlier this year, airport land can continue to be developed to accommodate the growing number of jets. But jets won't be able to grow by 100 percent, as they did in the past two decades, or gobble up every acre the market might demand.

"This was a tremendous way to protect an area for the propeller users and meet future demand, as well as allowing the local business people to develop their sites to meet their client's needs," said Van Nuys Airport manager Selena B. Birk.

"It's a giant step forward. I am so grateful that we're here."

Finding a home for the props is not just a nostalgic nod to the halcyon days of hobby flying out of Van Nuys, but a business move to boost the airport economy, which already generates $1.2 billion annually, according to a 1998 study. The airport provides more than 10,000 jobs and $73 million in annual state and local taxes.

As propeller planes - or pistons - have plummeted from 1,100 in 1983 to just over 500 today, jets have skyrocketed during that same period from 83 to 165.

The growing jet business - chartering the rich, famous and powerful in the privacy of their own wings - plays a substantial role in airport traffic.

Various airport tenants who house and service prop planes have wanted to get into the growing jet market, but they've been unable to win community support and airport approvals.

The property set aside for prop plane companies won't have to compete against proposals from jet operators who typically pay nearly twice as much rent - and would win out just about every time.

During construction, the airport has plans for temporary prop plane areas, including one across from the Van Nuys FlyAway on Woodley Avenue, which had long been used for storing vehicles but was recently returned for aviation use.

There are still holdouts - neighbors who would prefer to see no growth in airport traffic and have retail instead, or business boosters who want greater aviation uses to reap even grander economic rewards.