To the Editor,

We went to the Planning Board meeting earlier this month to hear about a plan that will affect us all.  The airport is building a massive FedEx facility to move cargo, via trucks and planes, from Logan Airport to T.F. Green.   Once that’s in gear, Amazon can come in too, connecting with the new warehouse built by some speculators in the old Confreda cornfield.

At the Sawtooth Building, we are joined by a group of airport people who have come to show their plan. It’s a preview. A hearing before the City Council must be held to close down some streets where freighter jets are to be parked behind homes on Palace Avenue.

The people are assured that a berm is being built to cut down on the noise from the jets unloading at the FedEx terminal – which seems more than a little strange given that this Field View Drive berm points in the wrong direction. It does not deflect noise from the proposed terminal.

The Strawberry Field Road berm in front of the proposed terminal is Okay. But not the Field View berm.

Nobody points out these oddities to the people of Palace Avenue.  Plans feel vague and somehow shaky, but details are not forthcoming.  Walls can block sound, so the berm, it is presumed, will make everyone happy.  Step two of the plan may now be deployed: to move in the planes to behind Palace Avenue.

 But one person at this meeting cannot be mollified.  An elderly gentleman with a neat garden very much likes his house by the airport. A holdout from the old days of airport acquisitions, this man resisted the airport’s efforts to buy his mother out when it bought up all the homes on Field View Drive. To this day, he is in the way.  He says “Don’t take my property!”

Ah well, the airport figures, no problem!  Don’t make a big deal of it.  Just quietly call in a surveyor from West Virginia and advise that surveyor that the airport owns this fellow’s lot.  Surely the authorities know who owns what, and no one would think to question them.   Just draw it up “real purdy” and show it to the Planning Board.  And that’s what they did.

But The Suits got caught.  The gentleman was tipped off to the fact that they were taking his lot. He came to the meeting, mad as a hornet.

 The Planning Director said something to the effect of, “Errr, um, so to speak and as it were.” The wannabe authorities were then told by the Planning Board to fix the survey and come back next month.

I went to the airport board meeting the following day and demanded that they apologize to the gentleman. The Chair took down his address. Problem apparently solved.

But soon thereafter, a brigade of bulldozers and guys with chainsaws arrived borne by trucks displaying FAA orange-and-white checkered flags.  With no further ado, they swiftly erected Jersey barriers across the road and posted no trespassing signs. It appears to be their lot now. And the roads too.

 This is a sad day for Warwick and the U.S.A.  Our Mayor says he’s okay with the seizure, as long as the FedEx trucks, UPS trucks, and Amazon trucks up by the old cornfield stay on airport property to get to the Interstate. Wake up! There is so much more to this than meets the eye.

The Suits tell this man to expect only two new planes per day from Logan. The enormous facility being built suggests many more soon to come.

 Overshadowing all of this activity is one foundational problem: It’s all illegal, very illegal.

The solution? Let them build their berm, but turn the land into a park, a park for the people and their dogs, or whatever. No one wants a parking lot for stinky jet freighters from Germany or from wherever they may come. Airport expansion that increases passenger service to as many destinations as possible is to be desired, but not at the expense of illegal sleights-of-hand that grab land and desecrate neighborhoods.

Richard & Jo-Ann Langseth
Warwick