County taking first steps toward new San Luis Obispo airport terminal

March 08--County supervisors have taken the first steps toward designing a new passenger terminal at the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, although they acknowledged that the money that will be needed to actually build it is uncertain.

Supervisors on Tuesday authorized a current "budget adjustment" of $1,147,502. Of that, $1,090,127 comes from a Federal Aviation Administration grant, and $57,375 from passenger facility charges.

The money would go toward design of a new terminal by consultant Reynolds, Smith and Hills.

The concept is for a 42,000 square foot, stand-alone facility that would cost $17 million, Airport General Manager Richard Howell told the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors.

For supervisors, the move represents a retrenchment. They had to back away from ambitious plans for a new terminal and parking structure in 2008 as a series of financial misadventures dented the airport operation.

The cost of oil rose. Some airlines left the local market. Then the recession hit. The number of passengers dropped by nearly one-quarter, bottoming out at 121,326 in 2009 after a high in 2007 of 187,000.

Since then, the number of people flying, although it has fluctuated slightly, has generally inched upward. At the end of 2011 the count was 137,604.

Howell told supervisors it is time to move forward on alleviating a problem of "customers continu(ing) to suffer from insufficient, inadequate, and aged facilities in the existing terminal."

Howell also pointed out that the current terminal violates federal standards because its aircraft parking area is too close to the center-line of the runway.

The airport has a federal waiver that allows that for now, but the FAA expects the county to fix it, Howell said.

There is also an August 2013 "use it or lose it" deadline to spend this pot of federal money.

In response to an email from The Tribune, Howell said he could not predict when a new terminal would be ready to receive passengers, because many decisions must be made by the Board of Supervisors between now and whenever that date might be, including funding decisions.

"A funding plan will be fleshed out as part of the project approved today," he wrote. "Most likely the funding sources will be federal grants, passenger facility charges, airport revenue, and funding from the county with debt service by the airport."

"Much of the federal funding is based on what and how things are built, which of course we don't know yet," Howell wrote.

Copyright 2012 - The Tribune, San Luis Obispo, Calif.