Tucson airport’s master plan puts it at the heart of logistics center
By David Hatfield
What began as an effort to make sure Raytheon Missile Systems would have a long, secure future home has become something much bigger, putting Tucson International Airport as the logistics hub for the entire Sun Corridor, the “megapolitan” area projected to include more than 9 million people by 2050 stretching from Nogales and Sierra Vista north to Prescott.
At the heart of a 3,000-acre aerospace-defense research center and business park would be a convergence of high-speed roadways and rail links interconnected with the airport that would be able capitalize on its ability to move goods to and from the Sun Corridor and Mexico with other points in the U.S. and to Asian markets.
“Once you to start to look at this thing and put the pieces together, it all of a sudden hits you, ‘oh my gosh,’ the potential here is huge,” said Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, who initially spearheaded the effort as a means to try to provide a buffer for future expansion of Raytheon Missile Systems.
For its part, the board of directors of the Tucson Airport Authority this month approved an update to the master plan for Tucson International Airport that was first adopted in 1974. It had been updated five times since then, most recently in 2004. Until now, however, the master plan and its updates have focused mostly on its role to meet capacity demands as the Tucson region’s major commercial airport. This “iconic update,” as Jordan Feld, the airport authority’s director of planning, calls it, puts the expansion as part of a concept.
“Coming for a compehensive of analysis of what’s best for the airfield, this is the best policy plan in the history of the airport,” Feld said. “In the process we literally flipped the land mass on its head and with the open land reserves that could literally quadruple what we can do.”
While nobody is suggesting such an expansion is imminent, Feld says other airports would be envious to have that much capacity for expansion in reserve.
In the meantime, he says, the airport can pursue airport-compatible development.
The focal point of the airport’s updated master plan extending out to 2035 adds a second parallel main runway along with some realignments and additional taxiways as safety enhancements for the airport’s mix of airline, air national guard and general aviation aircraft.
Construction of the new runway would allow the airport to segregate arriving from departing aircrafts on two separate runways. The new runway and most of the taxiway improvements are projected to be completed within the next decade.
The additional runway has been a part of previous master plan updates but Feld says those were based on projections for dramatic increases in airline services that failed to materialize since the recession. After dropping dramatically from about 280,000 aircraft operations in 2006 to 200,000 in 2011, the projection now is for a growth rate of about 1.2 percent per year for the next 20 years.
The setback of not completing the parallel runway earlier produced a side benefit, Feld says. The airport was able to work with the Federal Aviation Administration on a revised runway plan that will have less impact on Raytheon Missile System’s site south of the airport.
The airport’s master plan also fits in with a study done by the Joint Planning Advisory Committee of the Pima, Maricopa and Central Arizona associations of government, which identified Tucson International as the primary logistics center moving goods in and out of the Sun Corridor.
To that end, Pima County has proposed:
• Constructing a parkway, and possibly as much as a full-scale freeway, that would go between Interstate 19 south of the airport east to connect at Interstate 10 near Rita Road. As much as 80 percent of commercial produce coming through Nogales’ Mariposa Port of Entry is shipped to points east of Tucson. Construction of the connector roadway would speed those shipments and no longer require trucks to travel all the way into Tucson. The connector would also provide direct road access to the Port of Tucson, which offers rail access both east and west of Tucson, including cargo containers for trans-oceanic shipments.
• Reconstructing the Union Pacific Railroad line south to Nogales, which is the only Arizona rail connection to Mexico.
One other item not included in the written proposals but suggested by Huckelberry is that local leaders push the idea that both an upgraded freight rail line and a high-speed passenger rail line start at Tucson’s airport and go north.
“Building rail lines from the airport north makes sense because as part of logistics center, it could be a revenue generator from the beginning,” Huckelberry said.
Under current plans set out by the Arizona Department of Transportation, the first phase of the rail link isn’t even proposed to go south of downtown Tucson.
With all the excitement over the possibilities of a making the airport area into a logistics center, Pima County didn’t lose sight of the original intent of its plans to develop a buffer around Raytheon Missile Systems and develop a business and industrial complex south of the airport.
Those plans include:
• Realigning Hughes Access Road about 800-feet south, moving farther away from Raytheon’s facilities.
• Relocate the main entrance for the Air National Guard base to Park Avenue. The current entrance off Valencia Road has a bridge crossing a wash and doesn’t provide enough space for vehicles not allowed on the base to turn around.
The key to all of this happening, according to Huckelberry, will require an extraordinary amount of intergovernmental cooperation from the federal government — some of the land is currently owned by the U.S. Air Force — and state and local officials.
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