"Whoever thought that this moment was going to arrive and that we would all be sitting together beginning a celebration of a new day for the Long Beach Airport?" said Gabelich, who was part of LBHUSH2, a neighborhood group that represented residents living near the airport.
Then she and two other LBHUSH2 members presented to airport director Mario Rodriguez an unusual gift: a framed protest poster that read "Say No to Airport Expansion."
"Mario, this is to add to your wall in memory of a long journey," Gabelich said as Rodriguez accepted the gift with good humor.
To many of the 250 people present at Wednesday's ceremonial event, the gesture symbolized how long and how hard-fought the process was to bring about the highly anticipated airport modernization project.
Work will soon begin on the airport's new $45 million passenger concourse, set to open in 2013.
When completed, the terminal will feature a streamlined passenger screening area and a 34,750-square-foot boarding lounge with comfortable seating and upgraded concessions.
It also will include an atrium, garden and a rooftop solar display that will allow the airport to lower its power use by 13 percent.
Mayor Bob Foster spoke about how a new terminal will more comfortably accommodate the airport's 3 million annual passengers and provide as many as 350 local jobs.
"We want to give passengers a good experience and that will happen," Foster said. "And it will be good for the economy. It will enable us to have local hires, particularly local young people, so we can get them not only into a job but a career."
The project has been a decade in the making.
For years, the 1940s-era terminal designed for only 500,000 annual passengers strained to accommodate the
3 million people that now flow through it to fly on 41 daily commercial flights.
Several obstacles - a drawn-out battle over the size of the project and how it could affect the quality of life of neighbors living under the flight path and a lawsuit by the Long Beach Parent Teacher Association that feared the rise in noise and pollution levels - delayed the airport's modernization projects.
Several city officials credited Rodriguez for his role in moving the projects forward.
Wednesday's event comes about a year after city officials celebrated the groundbreaking of another airport project. Work is under way on a $58 million, 1,989-space garage project, which is expected to open by September - three months earlier than anticipated.
Foster acknowledged that the road to improving the airport was not easy.
"Look, despite what you see today, there was a lot of tension here," he said. "Neighborhoods were concerned about noise, and we wanted commerce to continue. You know it's a slow process and it's painful, but what you see here today is uniting community. ... It was worth waiting for."
(Karen Robes Meeks - Long Beach Press Telegram)
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