About 13.200 residents of Helsinki have filed to Helsinki City Council an initiative to keep Malmi Airport in aviation use. A large collection of facts has been delivered along with the initiative, as the Council’s discussions and earlier decisions have revealed that the Council members have been working with inadequate and erroneous information. The correct information has been published also for citizens to study at www.malmiairport.fi.
The number of signatures in the initiative is a Finnish national record, and exceeds by far the minimum requirement of 2% of the municipality’s resident population eligible to vote.
“The people of Helsinki want to keep their valuable airport and develop it in aviation use”, says Chairman Timo Hyvönen of Friends of Malmi Airport, the civic organization behind the initiative. “It is quite arrogant to plead that more than half of the Council members vote for residential building on the airport, when 67% of the voters want to keep the airport”, Hyvönen continues referring to an opinion poll conducted by TNS Gallup Ltd (8/2014). “We now hope for the Council members to exercise good judgment, objective familiarization with the subject, and right decisions following the will of the voters.”
The area of Malmi Airport has proven a valuable nature environment. It is a habitat of e.g. the great snipe (Gallinago media), a specifically protected species. The Council members have today also been given data of the airport’s preliminary butterfly, moth and bat surveys.
In addition, the Council members now have at their disposal the true figures related to Malmi Airport’s traffic, hobby aviation, business and economics as well as a business plan to form a basis for developing the airport’s new operating model.
Information about the airport area’s inclusion in the National Board of Antiquities’ inventory of Built Cultural Environments of National Significance (RKY) as well as its international recognitions of merit have also been presented to the Council. As a basis for true evaluation of the land’s usability to residential purposes, warning examples have been compiled from nearby Fallkulla residential area and from the ground surveys already conducted by the City.
The Council members are also reminded that the State’s funding to the so-called Pisara (Drop) railway line in downtown Helsinki, which was the basis for the agreement between the State and the municipalities of Helsinki region, has been cancelled. The view of the voters has been delivered to the Council in the form of Gallup survey results.
The Council members’ present opinions on the matter can be found (in Finnish) at http://www.malmiairport.fi/helsingin-kaupunginvaltuusto-kanta-malmin-lentoasemaan/ .
More information:
Friends of Malmi Airport
Chairman Timo Hyvönen
tel. +358 50 374 8371
puheenjohtaja@malmiairport.fi
Attachments:
- National Board of Antiquities RKY2009: Malmi Airport, Built Cultural Environment of National Significance (in Finnish)
- Business Plan
- Air traffic volume
- Businesses at Helsinki-Malmi Airport 2015
- Associations at Helsinki-Malmi Airport 2015
- Bat survey at Malmi Airport 2015, intermediate report (in Finnish)
- Butterfly and moth survey 2015, report (in Finnish)
- Fallkulla’s suitability for residential building (HBL 10 Aug 2015): Leran gissel för byggande i Malm Fallkulla (in Swedish)
- The City’s ground survey: Estimated length of piles, Depth of the layer requiring stabilization
- Europa Nostra Finland: Malmi Airport is the Most Endangered Cultural Heritage Site in Finland 2015 (in Finnish)
- World Monuments Fund, Malmi Airport
- Statement to Parliamentary Committee on Traffic about Malmi Airport 2015 (in Finnish)
- Demand for rectification of the City Board’s decision 10/2014 (in Finnish)
- TNS Gallup 2014
- The government cancels funding for Pisara rail line (in Finnish)
- EUROCONTROL Long-Term Air Traffic Forecast 2010-2030 (Finland p. 41 and 48)
- European Parliament Resolution on an Agenda for Sustainable Future of General and Business Aviation