Oct. 31—In the temperamental travel industry, it can be hard to predict the future. But at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, the future arrived basically overnight.
This year is already the busiest in the airport's recorded history, with about 3 million passengers scheduled to be on the books for 2021. Sarasota Bradenton also repeatedly broke its own monthly passenger traffic record this year.
"I tell people, 'Imagine if the roadway traffic went up 250% a year,'" airport president and CEO Rick Piccolo said. "No matter how much money you have to build the roads, you couldn't build them fast enough."
The airport, situated in both Sarasota and Manatee counties as well as the city of Sarasota, is looking toward its future in a big way. It's planning to expand its facilities, add new services and diversify its revenue streams so its financial status is not as susceptible to the tourism industry's highs and lows.
But planning for the future can be difficult in the travel industry, where it's so normal for disease outbreaks, weather issues and even terrorist attacks like 9/11 to alter business conditions at the drop of a hat. Many of the factors can be outside the airport's control.
Sarasota Bradenton had built a gleaming new terminal about 30 years ago when the effects of earlier government deregulation and competition among airlines led to a quick, sharp decline in the number of flights using the airport. Local fliers would criticize airport operations, wondering why they had to drive to Tampa for a flight when there was an airport next door.
Sarasota Bradenton had trouble attracting airlines, no matter how much it lowered landing fees and made other concessions to make it conducive for companies to offer service.
In more recent years, Sarasota Bradenton has been buoyed by the explosive growth of lower cost airlines, such as Allegiant Air, that turned to underused regional airports as its business model. At the same time, major carriers such as Southwest Airlines have also returned.
"Our growth is so explosive here that you have to adjust. Some of it is very planned. Some comes upon you," Piccolo said. "We've seen demand go up so quickly that it's been a little more difficult in the sense that it happened literally pretty much overnight."
Over the summer, Piccolo unveiled detailed plans for the growing airport. They include a new ground transportation center, a consolidated rental car facility, a retail/office/hotel development called "SRQ Gateway" at the site of the current car rental lots, a new customs facility and a multimillion dollar terminal expansion including more restaurants.
Before COVID-19, the thought was that a lot of these projects wouldn't need to come to fruition for five to 10 years. But with the way the airport's growing, they've become more urgent.
"This growth is so explosive here that you have to adjust — roll with the punches, do the best you can and build," Piccolo said.
Since the airport is within three different government jurisdictions different parts of the expansion are making their way through different governing bodies.
"It's three different coordination efforts," Piccolo said.
The airport's north quadrant area, for example, is in Manatee County. The airport is working to turn this into an industrial area with all of the site work done so it's attractive to potential tenants, Piccolo said.
The airport put in roads, a sewer, electricity and drainage, Piccolo said, and is awaiting potential customers.
"When a company looks at that parcel of land, they don't have to do any drainage. It's already there," he said. "We're pretty much shovel-ready, as long as they are the type of use that goes there and we're not going to try and attract the type of use that doesn't go there."
The there, Piccolo said, is to diversify how the airport makes its money. It has no taxing power, it's entirely self-sufficient and operates without debt, Piccolo said.
By having industrial tenants in the north quadrant and others at its sites on 15th Street and Tallevast Road, Sarasota- Bradenton's financial future won't be completely dependent on air travel trends.
"If everything was tied up with the airlines, then as airline service comes and goes, we would be in a very volatile situation from a financial standpoint," Piccolo said. "By having this diversified portfolio of different businesses on our property, one business might be in a downturn, but not every business, is so it's building stability."
Part of the airport's expansion plans are in with the city of Sarasota. On Nov. 3, the city's Development Review Committee will hear a proposal for the construction of three buildings and a three-level parking garage for rental car facilities on an 11-acre site at Rental Car and Old Bradenton roads.
Even though the travel industry is unpredictable, planning big for the future is a normal thing to do, Jackie Coburn, an airport planner with airport design firm Arup, said. In fact, airports usually have at least one improvement or expansion project in the works at all times, she said.
At the same time, because travel is ever-changing, forecasts for airport planning have to include a best and worst-case scenario, Coburn said.
"Obviously we're in unprecedented times, but in reality there are parallels — SARS, 9/11 or economic downturns," she said. "There are precedents for the decline of the industry and its eventual bounce and recovery."
Whatever happens in the future of travel, it's a new day at Sarasota- Bradenton. The airport finally met its capacity — it's just no one expected it to happen this quickly.
"The one advantage we had, which was always a disadvantage before, was we were underutilized. We had more capacity than we had traffic," Piccolo said. "Now we've filled that capacity. We had a buffer, but it sure went fast."
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