Dec. 26—Soon, flying out of the Santa Fe Regional Airport should be more convenient — and for a larger number of passengers.
The city is close to breaking ground on a more than $20 million project to upgrade and expand the terminal and parking lot, airport director Mark Baca said.
The project will add about 9,000 square feet to the airport terminal, including a third departure and arrival gate, which Baca said will allow for additional flights and an expanded passenger waiting area and baggage claim.
The old terminal building will be remodeled to accommodate an additional airline and rental car company, as well as a cafe and a snack shop, Baca said. Currently, food at the airport is sold from vending machines.
Crews with Albuquerque-based Bradbury Stamm Construction are locating utility lines and surveying the site, Baca said last week.
"The schedule right now, we are just getting a feel for it," he said during a phone interview. "Because it is such a big project, there is a lot of site survey to do. We don't have a groundbreaking [date] yet, but we will be announcing one and hopefully get the project underway within the next couple of weeks."
Baca said the expansion project is needed.
"Rather than rushing people through the lines, we will be able to have a little area to help with that," he said. "It will be more comfortable for the passengers."
Many of the expansion needs were laid out in the 2017 Airport Master Plan, which envisioned the next nearly two decades of expansion at the airport based on growing ridership.
According to a city memo, 230,000 passengers passed through the airport in 2018 and 283,000 in 2019.
The pandemic reduced passenger counts in 2020, but Baca said numbers are rebounding, with 200,000 passengers expected to fly in or out of the Santa Fe Regional Airport in 2021.
According to the document, the passenger terminal is about 11,000 square feet, but based on passenger traffic and similar facilities, it should be closer to 33,000 square feet.
"We are growing at a faster rate than expected," Baca said.
Baca said the airport hasn't received a major upgrade since 2016, when its screening area was expanded to increase capacity from about 30 to about 50 passengers. Now, he said, commercial flights typically carry about 75 passengers, causing a bottleneck at security checkpoints.
Baca said he hopes the expansion will help alleviate parking woes in front of the airport. The current gravel lot, which Baca said is too small to accommodate the growing flight traffic, will more than double from
200 spaces to about 500 paved and "well-lit" spaces.
"It will be a lot safer than it is now," Baca said.
The City Council approved the construction contracts in October, but the project hit a speed bump as some councilors raised concerns that the $20 million project wasn't vetted by the council's Finance Committee.
City Councilor and former mayor candidate JoAnne Vigil Coppler was the first to question why such a large expenditure didn't make it through the committee at an October Public Works and Utilities meeting, motioning to have the item sent back to Finance for discussion. She also questioned why the bid period was only 28 days.
On Wednesday, she said she still believes the Finance Committee should have vetted the contract.
"It was a huge contract, and for it not to go through Finance is ludicrous," she said. "If we were on the wire on the deadline, that is just once again being behind on contracts."
John Quinn Pate, principal architect with the firm Molzen Corbin, which contracted with the airport on the project, said the city was offered an "acceleration discount" locking in a lower price if the contracts were approved by Oct. 14.
If that didn't happen, the price would have increased by
$1.7 million, he said, mainly because of uncertainties surrounding subcontractor and material costs.
He said he couldn't guarantee the city would get the same price if it pushed the contract back to the Finance Committee and missed the Oct. 14 deadline.
The project was quoted at $13.5 million, with the city prepared to kick in additional funding, but the final — and only — bid to be submitted came in nearly $8 million higher than expected at $21.5 million.
The city has received
$10.5 million from the Legislature to fund the project, and also approved additional funding at an October council meeting.
City Councilor Chris Rivera, chairman of the city's seven-member Airport Advisory Board, said he was struck by the cost of the project but said most bids have come in higher than expected due to the pandemic and inflation issues. He said that "ideally" the contract would have been vetted by the Finance Committee, but that he understood that time constraints made expediting the process necessary.
He said he spoke with Public Works Director Regina Wheeler, who told him she believed the bid came in high, and that there potentially could be some cost saving as the project moves forward.
Finance Chairman Roman "Tiger" Abeyta, also a member of the Public Works and Utilities Committee, said at the October meeting he wouldn't support sending the contract back to the Finance Committee to potentially gamble an additional $1.7 million of taxpayer money. Councilor Signe Lindell agreed.
Abeyta did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.
While the cost might have come in higher than expected, Randy Randall, city tourism director, said he expects the expansion to be a boom to tourism.
Randall said he believes there is interest from other airlines to set up shop at the airport, but the terminal size has made it difficult to manage. He said connecting flights to either Southern California or Chicago would likely bring the city additional tourist dollars.
"We have been running pretty much at facility capacity out there," he said.
"The facility has been our limitation."
Adding connections at the airport would provide more options for people who missed flights, Randall said.
He added, tourists who fly into Santa Fe typically stay half a day longer than if they fly into the state's largest airport, Albuquerque International Sunport, nearly an hour to the south.
"I can see it continuing to extend the length of stay here in Santa Fe," Randall said. "And it certainly supports the business side of Santa Fe, which is also visitation."
Baca said he doesn't expect construction to affect business at the airport, and no terminal shutdowns are planned as work continues.
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