TIA Presses Plans For Parking Needs

By Ted Jackovics, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Jan. 5–TAMPA — Airport officials on Thursday continued to accelerate expansion plans to accommodate record passenger growth expected this year and beyond.

The growth trend became all too clear during the Christmas-to-New Year’s Day period when Tampa International Airport opened overflow parking areas to handle a record number of holiday travelers wanting to park.

The airport saw a 10.3 percent jump in the number of cars parked in its three garages during the 10-day period between Dec. 22 and Dec. 31, compared with the same period in 2005. The airport’s daily parking garage inventory — conducted each day at 3 a.m. — reported a total of 154,206 cars parked in the garages, a record for the winter holiday period.

By comparison, 139,854 cars parked in the garages during the same period in 2005.

Airport officials said Thursday they did not yet have a complete tally of the number of passengers during the recent holiday. But it’s likely to be a record number for the winter holidays. March historically is the airport’s peak period for passenger traffic.

“We were busy as the dickens,” airport Director Louis Miller said. “We had a record day for baggage on Tuesday with 38,000 outbound bags.”

To help accommodate the growth, the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority on Thursday revised the airport’s 2007 operating budget it approved in September and awarded design contracts for a handful of projects, including a new economy parking garage announced last month.

The board approved a $3.2 million design contract with Gresham Smith and Partners for the second phase of the economy parking garage, which will accommodate 5,600 more cars and bring the total economy garage capacity to 11,200 cars when it opens by Thanksgiving 2008. The project originally was scheduled for completion in 2010.

The current airport parking capacity of nearly 20,000 spaces, which includes paved and grass overflow lots for peak holiday seasons, will temporarily be reduced by about 2,000 spaces during construction of the new economy garage, which will be built adjacent to the existing one.

After construction is completed in 2008, the airport will have 21,344 parking spaces in the short-term, long-term and economy garages.

Paved and grass overflow lots, and the airport’s peak period strategy of using parking attendants to “squeeze” cars into space normally not used for parking, will then have 26,021 parking spaces for holiday demand.

That should be sufficient to meet peak demand for: 20,336 parking spaces a day in the summer of 2015; 24,386 spaces for the 2015 Thanksgiving holiday period; and 26,534 spaces for the 2015 Christmas holiday period.

A project to widen the George Bean Parkway, which directs traffic into, away and around the main terminal, is expected to be completed by Aug. 31, 2008. The board awarded an $11.4 million contract Thursday to Cone & Graham Inc. for a portion of the $31.4 million parkway project.

In addition, the board Thursday moved forward by four months plans to design a four-lane, north-south access road from the Drew Park area to Hillsborough Avenue so the new roadway can be completed by 2010.

Completion of the project is a requirement to relocate the main cargo complex from where a new North Terminal is planned.

Starting the North Terminal project depends on how quickly annual passenger traffic grows from the 19 million Tampa International handled last year to the estimated 25 million to 28 million passenger capacity the existing main terminal can handle.

Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at tjackovics@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7817.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

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