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[SA] New Terminal B will break ground on June 17th
I heard a rumor about this earlier in the week, but since it was unsubstantiated I didn't feel like it deserved its own thread. Now its official, though!
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Costlier airport terminal OK'd
Web Posted: 06/05/2008 11:12 PM CDT
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
Without a word, the City Council on Thursday approved contracts that will pump up the cost for a new airport passenger terminal by $34 million.
Half of the jump — a third more than the $100 million estimate in 2006 — is blamed on labor and material costs being increased by a local construction boom and rising fuel prices. The rest is from changes to the terminal plan, such as adding more space for tenants.
With construction costs escalating seemingly everywhere in recent years, council members apparently didn't have anything new to say Thursday, Mayor Phil Hardberger surmised after the meeting.
“It is now common knowledge that all construction costs are going up,” he said. “I think people now have just accepted that you can't build today what you had planned to build five years ago.”
If council members asked any questions about the swollen cost for San Antonio International Airport's new terminal, which will replace a dated, eight-gate building in two years, they did so in meetings with staff over the past two weeks.
The extra cost will be covered by shifting money within the airport budget, using reserve funds, and savings gained by modifying other expansion projects. About $13 million was recouped by ditching plans for consolidated staff offices.
“We need to live within our budget and the money that we have,” Airport Director Mark Webb said. “It's all paid for by those who use the airport.”
Officials made similar adjustments in 2006 when costs for a five-level parking garage, which should be completed this month, and a planned extension of a double-decked roadway ballooned by 30 percent, to $99 million. The $23 million spike has since been shaved by $4 million.
Also since then, an assistant airport director resigned under pressure, a private project manager was replaced, and a city audit said a contractor overcharged the airport $255,000.
Officials will break ground June 17 on the 251,000-square-foot, eight-gate Terminal B, and start work Monday on the $41 million elevated road that will run past it. Crews could finish the road late next year.
By the end of this month, the last of 2,800 spaces in the $44 million parking garage should open, bringing total airport parking to 9,000 spots. Officials opened 1,200 spots in the garage just before Christmas.
While much of the airport construction has been out of sight the past couple of years, travelers will be sheathed by the transformation in coming months as piers, beams and walls sprout for the elevated road and terminal.
The first big change will occur late Monday when the drop-off and pickup area for Terminal 2 is moved to make way for the two-tier road.
“I really think the community will be excited,” Webb said. “Everything we've been talking about the last couple of years will start to take shape.”
Along with a planned Terminal C that could start with five gates and go up to 11, airfield improvements, noise insulation for nearby homes, expansion of Stinson Municipal Airport and other projects through 2015, costs for the city's aviation program come to $635 million.
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