Hundreds of local residents attend the Federal Aviation Administration’s public meeting on the proposed runway expansion at Green Airport, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, in Warwick, Wednesday.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

WARWICK — Hundreds of people flocked to the Crowne Plaza Hotel Wednesday night expecting to hear the Federal Aviation Administration explain in detail why it is supporting a proposal that would extend the runway at T.F. Green Airport in a southerly direction.

That’s not how the evening unfolded.

Deviating from the format of meetings past, the FAA did not have the crowd gather in a centralized spot for a formal presentation. Instead, it divided the hotel’s huge ballroom into three sections with maps, aerial photographs and other information mounted on easels that were lined up around the perimeter.

Signs instructed residents to find the displays that were dedicated to issues they were concerned about. Once in the appropriate area, residents could talk to FAA representatives who were mingling with the crowd or simply write down their remarks and drop them into large cardboard boxes.

Chairs were set up in the center section of the ballroom where an automated slide show and audiotape gave a 15-minute overview of all airport expansion options — with the presentation repeating every half-hour.

The results were slightly chaotic as people in the ebbing and flowing crowd of nearly 400 wandered from section to section, most looking for someone with a nametag or latching onto the handful of city officials who were in attendance.

“This is just a divide-and-conquer maneuver,” Dan Murphy, of the group Concerned Airport Neighborhoods, declared as he stood in the foyer handing out anti-airport expansion signs.

Not so, said FAA spokesman Jim Peters, who said the format was intended to give residents more opportunity to speak one-on-one with FAA officials and ask questions specific to their own homes.

He said that 40 representatives of the federal agency were dispersed throughout the crowd, ready to sit down with people and answer questions. The FAA decided on the format, he said, after reviewing the effectiveness of past meetings in Warwick which involved long detailed presentations followed by a question-and-answer period.

Inevitably, Peters said, people’s questions were not often on the presentation but about airport expansion’s impact on their own homes. “This time we decided to try to give people more one-on-one time because that would be more valuable,” he said.

The FAA announced last week that it is supporting the proposal to extend T.F. Green’s main runway to the south, saying that would have less impact on the city than two other proposals which would have lengthened the runway in a northeast direction.

Mayor Scott Avedisian on Wednesday put the city on record as objecting to the expansion proposal, in part because the FAA has not answered all of the city’s questions and, he said, is basing some of its analysis on outdated or incomplete information.

The 60-page dissenting report that Avedisian presented to the FAA lists a number of local concerns including noise pollution, harm to nearby Buckeye Brook, the loss of businesses and homes, and the question of who will pay for the recreation fields that would be obliterated by the expansion.

“The FAA has acknowledged our concerns, but we have yet to receive any answers,” said Avedisian, who, like City Council members, was often surrounded by residents looking to them for direction. Local officials had to repeatedly remind people that this was an FAA meeting, not a city-run forum.

The southerly runway expansion would add about 1,600 feet to the 7,100-foot main runway. The $475-million project is being financed by the FAA and the Rhode Island Airport Corporation.

For the airport it would mean having enough length to get planes with larger passenger loads aloft, thus opening the door to direct flights to the West Coast.

For the city it means rerouting part of Main Avenue, but substantially less road reconfiguration and property takings than earlier, more ambitious proposals pending before the FAA that would have extended the runway to the north.

Although much of the focus has been on the runway extension, it is part of a larger project entailing safety and other improvements at the airport. The upgrading includes new safety zones at each end of Green’s shorter, crosswinds runway.

The city ultimately will have some voice in the project, because any wetlands permits that are required need the approval of the City Council.

FAA officials have said that they will incorporate local remarks into a draft environmental impact study that is expect to be released in the fall and that there will be more public hearings after that.

Kevin Dillon, president of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, has said that construction could be completed by 2013 if the application process goes smoothly.

Toward the end of last night’s session, Avedisian said he understands why the FAA changed the format, but he doesn’t think it worked.

“I don’t believe they accomplished what they wanted,” he said. “They tried an approach with less speaking and more information for individuals, but it seems that people were not able to get the information they hoped to.”

bpoliche@projo.com