Parking Garage at Cleveland Hopkins Airport Slated for $5 Million in Repairs

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland Hopkins International Airport is planning nearly $5 million in repairs to the facility’s Smart Parking Garage in early 2022.

With 4,240 spaces, the garage is the airport’s largest parking facility. It has been the subject of a series of repairs in recent years to shore up the structure, which was built in the mid-1990s.

Airport Director Robert Kennedy said the project should go out to bid early next year. “We decided we could continue to put a band-aid on it, or we could fix it,” he said.

He said the garage is inspected every month and remains safe to use. Approximately 200 spaces are currently out of commission to prevent further deterioration.

The garage will remain open during the repairs next year. The airport has allocated $4.9 million for the work.

Dennis Kramer, the airport’s chief of planning and engineering, said the scheduled repairs to the garage should extend its life by another 20 years or so – which is when it is slated to be replaced as part of a long-term plan to rebuild much of the airport.

The airport recently completed a federally mandated master plan process, which calls for $2 billion in capital investments to the facility over the next 20 years or so. Replacement of the parking garage is outlined in one of the later phases, which are timed to increases in passenger growth.

Earlier phases of the master plan’s improvements call for the airport’s aging terminal to be substantially rebuilt. Work on those earlier phases is expected to commence once passenger numbers at the airport have recovered from the downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Cleveland Hopkins predicts Thanksgiving air traffic will exceed 2019, so get to the airport early