Airport work contracted
Project to eliminate bottleneck
The Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport Commission on Thursday accepted a contractor’s low bid of $8.8 million for airport terminal improvements, including expanding the airport rotunda to open the area to family and friends awaiting returning travelers.
A security checkpoint that had to be put in place after Sept. 11, 2001, rendered the existing rotunda accessible only to ticketed passengers, which has created a bottleneck in a small area near the top of the escalators and stairs to the airport’s second floor, said Anthony Marino, the airport’s director of aviation .
“You have the bridge coming to and from the parking garage, the elevator, escalator and stairs all coming together at that point,” Marino said in an interview prior to Thursday’s commission meeting.
He said it was “massive confusion” at times as dozens of people got off planes, others arrived for departing flights and waiting friends and family without tickets all passed through the small, crowded space. The airport “tried to do some makeshift things to make things comfortable for visitors,” Marino said, but it was not a safe or pleasant environment for airport guests.
Marino said the project, expected to begin in March and to be completed in August 2013, involves moving the security screening entrance close to where the glass walls of the rotunda overlooking the runways are now and expanding the rotunda further outward toward the runways.
The second-floor gift shop will be moved as part of the project, Marino said. The gift shop and restaurant will remain on the other side of the security gate, accessible only to ticketed passengers, he said.
Airport commissioners voted to award the contract to J. Reed Contractors, whose $8.8 million bid was 12 percent below the engineers’ estimate of $10 million for the work. In addition to expanding the rotunda, the project includes other terminal modifications such as a new enclosed, curb-side check-in area, and new flooring and restrooms.
Airport Commission Chairman Jim Ellis noted that the construction work is being paid for entirely from the airport’s self-generated funds and does not come out of the city-parish’s general fund budget.
Marino said the rotunda always was intended to be a public space for airport visitors when it was opened in 2000, not long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, forced dramatic changes to security procedures at airports across the country.
“Because of 9/11, part of it became dysfunctional,” Marino said. “We have some funding available and will use that to remove that dysfunction.”
Board member Andrew McCandless questioned spending the money to expand the atrium, saying he frequently flies in and out of the airport and has not encountered any roadblocks at the security checkpoint. He noted that the commission last fall raised fees on car rental transactions because members were told that had to be done to meet debt service obligations on airport improvement projects.
Metro Councilman Trae Welch said ticketed passengers might not run into roadblocks at the security gate but the existing setup is a “very unfriendly environment” for people who are accompanying departing passengers or are waiting to welcome travelers returning from a flight.
“This, to me, makes Baton Rouge more friendly to the general public at large waiting for a flight to come in,” Welch said.
In other business Thursday, commissioners voted unanimously to re-elect Ellis as board chairman.
Commissioner Anthony “Buddy” Amoroso asked that he not be reappointed as vice chairman because he said he plans to run for the Metro Council District 8 seat currently held by Mike Walker. Walker is term limited and not eligible to run again for the council seat.
After a divided vote, commissioners decided to make Bob Breaux and Jonathan Starns co-vice chairmen of the airport commission.