Rent at Alaska's International Airports to Increase

Sept. 26, 2016

Despite a lack of recent increases, leasing land from the Alaska International Airport System will become more costly.

According to a report by Alaska Dispatch News, beginning Jan. 1, 2017, land lease rates at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and Fairbanks International Airport will increase. The two airports make up the Alaska International Airport System.

Marc Luiken, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, approved the hikes last month after rates remained steady since about 2003. At the Anchorage airport, the annual rate will go from 9 cents per square foot to 18 cents for aeronautical uses, and in Fairbanks it will go up to 12 cents, according to the report. The report added leases at Lake Hood Seaplane Base, managed by the Anchorage airport, will also go from 9 to 12 cents.

Between the Anchorage airport, the Fairbanks airport and Lake Hood, the airport system has about 270 land leases, Parrott said. Some of those spaces are for less than an acre on the Lake Hood side, where private airplanes and mechanics operate, to as much as 10 or 20 acres on the commercial side, where larger companies like Alaska Airlines and FedEx do business.

The airport system is also increasing rent on land used for non-aeronautical purposes, like parking, warehousing, maintenance and anything else that doesn't deal directly with operating the aircraft, to bring it up to fair market value.

John Parrott, manager of the Anchorage airport, said the change could have happened much more quickly but the airports wanted to allow time to prepare. The system is trying to "balance (its) funding sources," he said, adding that pretty much every other airport fee has gone up over the years, from concessions to landing fees.

"One of the things we're considering doing in the future is having much smaller changes but more often," he said. "It was a poor plan to wait 13 years without changing the rent."