Lake Erie Regional Transportation Authority

Created by the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Board of Commissioners in 1972 to study the need, feasibility, and location for a new international airport for the Cleveland service area. Urged on by the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, LERTA proposed the construction of a 13-mile stone-and-sand dike in Lake Erie as the site for the new airport. Despite an extensive public relations campaign, public opposition to the project was immediate and continuous. In 1977, the FAA determined that Cleveland did not need a new airport and in 1978 discontinued its support for the jetport-in-the-lake project.

The Lake Erie Regional Transportation Authority (f. 1972) was created by the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners in March 1972 with the authority to apply for federal funds to study in depth the need, feasibility, and location for a new major international airport for the Cleveland, Ohio, service area. James C. Davis, chairman of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, urged the creation of the authority on the premise that, by the 1990s, Cleveland Hopkins Airport would be incapable of serving the needs of the Greater Cleveland area. The Lake Erie Regional Transportation Authority (LERTA) applied for an airport master planning grant from the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct the study, and received $852,685 in June 1972 after agreeing to appointments to its board of trustees by Cleveland mayor Ralph J. Perk. LERTA's board of trustees eventually consisted of six members appointed by the city and four members appointed by the county commissioners, with Dr. Cameron M. Smith as the executive director.

LERTA requested proposals from numerous engineering and design consultants to study the feasibility of locating and constructing the airport in Lake Erie. This idea was first proposed in 1966 by Cleveland mayor Ralph Locher. Abe Silverstein, director of NASA's Lewis Research Center, reiterated the suggestion and conducted a pre-feasibility study for the Greater Cleveland Growth Association in 1969. In February 1973, LERTA selected the firms of Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff, and Landrum & Brown to jointly perform the feasibility study which was completed in 1977 at a cost of $4.3 million. The Growth Association supplied the initial $1.2 million and the Federal Aviation Administration supplied the bulk of the remaining money. Although sites in Ravenna and the Grafton-Beldon area of Medina and Lorain counties were considered, the site selected for the new jetport was a 13 mile stone-and-sand dike to be constructed in Lake Erie five miles off Cleveland's shoreline, approximately one mile east of the Cleveland water intake crib. The dike would surround a six-sided land mass reclaimed from the lake, forty feet below the lake's surface, and accessible by an Regional Transit Authority (RTA) train and two high-level bridges and other highways connecting it to the innerbelt. Although LERTA mounted an extensive public relations campaign to sell the jetport idea and the practical need for a new airport, the jetport-in-the-lake received severe criticism almost from the start. Environmentalists warned about the devastating shore erosion and pollution which would result from construction of the jetport, and others cited the severe weather conditions on Lake Erie which would result in intolerable aircraft arrival and departure delays. In particular, councilman Dennis Kucinich mounted extensive opposition to the jetport, along with other key city officials and the League of Women Voters, on the basis of its low cost-benefit ratio, renovating the existing Cleveland Hopkins airport, and the need to explore alternative forms of transportation. LERTA received a fatal blow in 1977 when the FAA determined that Cleveland would not need a new airport at least until the year 2000. The Department of Transportation decided that funds would be shifted toward improvements at existing airports rather than the construction of new ones. In 1978, the FAA discontinued its support of the jetport-in-the-lake project.