A new terminal for the Columbia Regional Airport is coming in for an expedited landing, and the project could be under budget and ahead of schedule, Mayor Brian Treece announced Wednesday morning from Hangar 350 at the airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration recently gave the city a green light to build a new terminal where Hangar 350 stands, immediately south of the existing terminal. The FAA told the city that the rapidly growing airport's one existing terminal is already over capacity and that it must move quickly to build a second.
United Airlines started offering flights from Columbia to Chicago and Denver in August, and the airport expects a record total of 170,000 passengers on its two airlines — United Airlines and American Airlines — by the end of the year.Treece said the airport's 50-year-old terminal can't keep up.
"While nobody likes to say 'emergency' at an airport, by any measure, passenger demand and aviation regulations have really stretched our little airport to its capacity," he said.
The Columbia City Council will vote on the proposal Monday. If it approves, the city will still need the FAA to sign off on an environmental study that already exists for the area before it can move ahead with construction. If the city can avoid doing another study, it could shave 12 to 15 months off the planning process.
Treece said he hopes the city can start taking the hangar apart when the ground thaws next spring and start vertical construction by the end of 2018.
Columbia voters overwhelmingly agreed to temporarily raise the city's hotel tax from 4 percent to 5 percent in August 2016 to raise $10 million for construction of the new terminal. At the time, the terminal was expected to cost around $38 million.
When Treece first saw what the terminal would cost, he said he thought they could bring it down. He said the new plan could save the city $10 million.
The council preferred a location north of the existing terminal, but that would require new taxiways and aprons. The new, proposed location to the south would use existing infrastructure.
"That's $10 to $16 million of concrete that the taxpayers don't have to pay for," Treece said. "That infrastructure that's already been invested there, we can reuse and modify what's existing right here, and passengers get to see the terminal going up right before their eyes, and hopefully that continues some of the momentum that we're seeing at Columbia Regional Airport."
A new, more modern and efficient terminal could be more cost-effective than the existing one.
"That's a 50-year-old building that's difficult to heat and cool, difficult to keep clean, difficult to move passengers effectively through it," Treece said.
He said he hopes the new terminal will allow passengers to move through more easily, which could help the airport be more attractive to passengers and more cost competitive.
The existing terminal is not energy efficient, Treece said. He found out last week that it still burns oil for heat. He said he hopes the new terminal would be a model for energy efficiency, pointing to the new city hall building as an example. For the design of the new terminal, Treece said he thinks people want something that looks modern but modest.
He pointed to a steel beam, painted white, set against the hangar's wall. In black letters, it reads, "Stephens College Aviation Department." He said the beam is from the old Columbia Municipal Airport that stood where Cosmo Park is today.
Treece said the beam will be displayed at the new terminal to pay tribute to Columbia's aviation history.
"We don't need a Taj Majal here, but we also need something better than a metal airport hangar," he said. "Having something that really connotes Columbia for the place that it is and makes a good first impression is what I'm going to be looking for."
Supervising editor is Tyler Wornell.