Brantley will stick around at RDU, and newspapers will have coin boxes there

July 20th, 2011 Amelie Wollaston

RALEIGH — John C. Brantley and Raleigh-Durham International Airport have found it hard to say good-bye to each other, and the RDU board this week persuaded Brantley to stay a few months longer as airport director.

Brantley announced in March that he would retire July 31 from the job he has held since 1982. But board members dont want to appoint a temporary replacement, and they asked him to stay until they hired a permanent successor.

Hes flexible, and we certainly want to minimize any gap in leadership, Terry Yeargan of Willow Spring, the RDU Authority board chairman, said today. We agreed it would be good if he stayed on through the fall.

Brantley, 69, will continue at his current salary, and the board on Thursday gave him a 6 percent raise to $241,574 effective Oct. 1.

Yeargan said Brantley might stay as long as five extra months, until Dec. 31, but he hopes to hire a new director before then. Friday was the deadline for candidates to apply.

Also Thursday, the airport authority expanded plans for renovating the old Terminal 1.

The project, now budgeted at $65 million, was enlarged to include a curbside canopy that will extend farther from the building to cover the commercial curb that serves buses, shuttles and taxis.

Also added were plans to paint the exteriors of the old north end of Terminal 1, which now houses Southwest Airlines, and the southern extension of the building. Both ends will be padlocked and mothballed after Southwest moves into the renovated big blue box that is the central section of Terminal 1, in 2014.

The airport board also approved guidelines Thursday that will make it possible for air travelers to buy newspapers from coin vending boxes in the passenger terminals, starting in October.

The News & Observer and three other newspaper companies sued RDU in 2004 over its ban on news racks, and a federal judge found that the airport authority was violating the newspapers First Amendment right to disseminate the news.

RDU was ordered to pay the newspapers more than $450,000 in legal expenses, after paying its own lawyers more than $500,000.

RDU dropped its appeal of the court order last year but said it would allow news racks only in the baggage claim rooms and ticketing lobbies. Newspaper officials insisted on the right to sell papers on the passenger concourse, as well.

In the policy approved Thursday, RDU said it will provide space for news racks at nine spots in the parking garage, ticketing lobbies and passenger concourses. Newspapers will pay a yearly rent of $150 for each box.

Were happy it is resolved, and were moving forward, said Orage Quarles III, president and publisher of The N&O.

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