In airport rental car battle, few remain on the sidelines
Two years ago, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car was bullish about its business prospects at Logan International Airport. The firm promised to tap unmet demand and generate an additional $3.26 million in sales in three years if it were allowed to move onto airport grounds, according to a Sept. 8, 2003 letter recently made public.
Enterprise said it would eventually add 225 more cars to its Logan operation. For the Massachusetts Port Authority, which gets a percentage of car rental revenues at the airport, the proposal made good business sense.
It prompted a move to evict another rental car company, Alamo, from about a third of its space in the airport's southwest service area to make room for Enterprise -- a plan now ensnared in an Alamo lawsuit.
Neighborhood activists, however, are also opposing the reconfiguration plan, saying it will bring more traffic and pollution. And they are concerned that East Boston's most powerful political figure, Senate President Robert E. Travaglini, has gone wobbly on the issue. After demanding a full environmental review for the project this spring, Travaglini's latest position is that it doesn't need that level of review.
That doesn't sit well with community activists like Robert Strelitz.
''Apparently the elected officials have no appetite to push this thing through," Strelitz said of Travaglini's decision not to support a legislative measure this fall that would require an environmental review of the project.
In a phone interview, Travaglini said that he was misled into supporting the review last spring but has since received assurances from Massport that the reconfiguration did not amount to an expansion that would hurt neighborhood residents.
''I'm not one to hesitate to call for an environmental review," said Travaglini, noting an unsuccessful attempt this spring to demand review of a planned economy parking lot at the airport. He said that he would be happy to take another look at the reconfiguration plan if necessary, but that, ''I don't want to be used by a rental car company."
Massport has characterized Alamo's efforts to block the Enterprise move as sour grapes. The port authority maintains the reconfiguration would not expand the 1-million-square-foot area used by rental agencies or significantly increase the number of cars and traffic at the airport.
Opponents, however, say ''shoehorning" another outfit into the southwest service area will lead to more vehicle trips, as space limitations prompt both companies to shift the storing of vehicles and their maintenance to locations outside the airport.
At issue is precisely how much more traffic the reconfiguration will generate. Using Enterprise's estimates, Alamo alleges 2,614 additional vehicle trips a day. The state's Executive Office of Environmental Affairs rejected that estimate in May as too high, when it ruled against requiring a study, according to office spokesman Joe Ferson.
Massport spokeswoman Danny Levy acknowledged last week that the port authority has done no traffic studies of its own.
Enterprise spokeswoman Laura Bryant confirmed the authenticity of the Sept. 8, 2003 letter, provided to the Globe by Alamo representatives. She declined to comment beyond saying that the plans had not moved forward since the letter was written.
"It's all just speculation," said Strelitz, the neighborhood activist, who lives a short walk from the service area. ''But there is bound to be an impact because they are adding another operation almost inside Jeffries Point."
In the letter, Bill Smith, Enterprise's regional vice president, wrote to Lowell Richards, director of development for Massport, that, ''in the case of Boston; we have 10,000 plus vehicles within an hour of the Airport. This means that if Enterprise were on a level playing field with the rest of the competition, it would be able to accomodate the 1 percent of customers that cannot get a rental car because the market is sold out."
Valerie Burns, president of Boston Natural Areas Network, called the project the latest example of Massport efforts to sidestep environmental review.
''Massport seems to spend as much time fighting environmental reviews as doing them," said Burns. ''It makes me uneasy."
''It should be a transparent process," said local activist Mary Ellen Welch. ''For many years," she said, Massport officials ''have been able to escape environmental review." She pointed to the current fight and the state's May 3 decision not to require review of the economy parking lot project.
Currently, the Enterprise cars are rented out of a lot in Revere and customers are bused into the airport. If the project goes forward, Welch said, ''all those cars will be coming into the neighborhood."
