Joe Lopano’s tenure at Tampa International Airport ended last month. He leaves his successor, Michael Stephens, with an upcoming international terminal, more customers than ever and Tampa Bay’s longest elevated train route — a 1.4-mile loop from the recently-built rental car center to the main terminal.
So Stephens is also looking outside the airport to make his mark.
To get to the airport, travelers coming from either side of Interstate 275 must navigate the Westshore interchange, a crowded exit connecting drivers to State Road 60, the Veterans Expressway and Tampa International. Drivers call the interchange one of Tampa’s worst choke points.
Stephens, a former Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority executive, imagines a six-mile rail route from Water Street through Midtown and the Westshore business district, all the way to SkyConnect, where riders could transfer to the Tampa airport’s main terminal with ease.
The vision has personal implications for Stephens, who commutes over an hour each day to the airport from North Tampa.
But it seems more remote than ever, as localities are at odds over wider highways and ferry boat grants. Leaders even disagree over whether they should raise property taxes so Hillsborough’s bus agency can fund its current threadbare routes through 2030.
But Stephens hopes to leverage his status as leader of one of the region’s most powerful transportation hubs. Here’s what he had to say about his new role. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about your path to Tampa International.
I got to Tampa almost 20 years ago, after I’d gotten out of the military.
I would have never imagined myself being back in aviation. I didn’t even take my first flight until I was 18 years old, and that was during my (military) training. Then I was an air traffic controller, and then I moved out of aviation, practicing law and finding my way back here at Tampa International about nine-and-a-half years ago, when I started as general counsel.
What struck you when you looked at Tampa International Airport‘s main terminal for the first time?
I’ve been to a lot of different places, a lot of airports, even before I came to Tampa International. And the thing about Tampa that I think makes us the best is that we’re incredibly efficient, and we are innovative in how we do things. Innovation in airports kind of started here, the whole hub-and-spoke thing that makes us so efficient to get from your garage to the gate.
Those are just the structural and the foundational design pieces. But I think what really, really makes us special is the people, right? You can go into LaGuardia, you can go into all kinds of other airports, and if you’re looking around or you seem lost, you’re going to probably stay lost, because generally people aren’t going to come up to you.
You’re near Tampa International, if you’re kind of looking around, or even you’re probably not lost, people just go up to you. They feel that you need help.
For so long, your career was tied to Joe Lopano. Now he’s gone. What was your biggest contribution to his master plan?
The biggest thing Lopano will tell you is not about so much about building the stuff, it’s really about building the team. Joe was here for 14 years. I’ve been here for almost 10 of that. The other executives have been here from the time that Joe came here. So when you look at it from that standpoint, it was always a team effort.
We always brought our best ideas and our best energies to the table to create things in the master plan, from SkyConnect to the (main) terminal expansion.
If we don’t have a fantastic, engaged team, none of the other stuff is sustainable. You’ll have the facilities, but you will come in here and you’ll have a bad experience eventually, because the team is not engaged.
As you’re talking about a world-class team, I’m reminded of what we’re hearing about airports in the news. Federal employees with the Transportation Security Administration are navigating a chaotic time. How do you keep morale up when not everything is in your control?
We can’t do what we do from the airport standpoint without the airlines folks, the concessionaires, the people that serve food and beverages and all those types of things.
We are really, really big on making sure that the team here feels engaged, and we have a tenant managers meeting. (For) all the people that are not airport employees, the leaders from those organizations, we can ask, “What’s on your plate? What’s bothering you? What can we do better from the federal government standpoint?“
What does 2040 look like for the airport?
You know, it’s people-focused. Because, again, what is the point of the infrastructure? It’s to support the people that come through the facilities.
We call our way the Tampa way, and we want it to be the best level of service that we can give to people.
So to that end, where do I see Tampa International in 14 years?
I love the use of technology and innovation. How do I and this team make the passenger journey easier? How do I give you better and more “wow” moments? How do I make this a destination beyond just traveling, right?
We need another hotel, I believe, because we are going to have about 10 million more people coming through here 10 to 12 years from now. We need more space and connectivity options. We need more food and beverage options.
We’ve touched on the need for better ground-level transportation. What does your dream light rail route look like in Tampa Bay?
The easiest place to start is where you have high densities within your transit corridor. I think of maybe coming from Water Street, right where you’ve got a lot of density there through downtown. Then through the Gasworx area, all the way down to Midtown, where TECO has a new building going up. Then they’re looking at developing Westshore.
So that’s about six miles from Water Street down here to Westshore. Imagine all the volume that you can take off the roadways just going from downtown to the airport.
So I think that that’s something that’s very doable and very possible. The will, I think, for the public is there, and that’s evidenced by the fact that the transit referendum (in 2018) passed by 57%, so people see the need for it.
The trouble is that Tampa and Hillsborough County are increasingly politically divided on the path forward for transit. How do you resolve those differences?
While we’ve had some challenges, I see there’s clear movement in the right direction. There’s exploration of a regional (transportation planning organization), instead of these individual organizations.
You see much more communication between key stakeholders, whether it’s the city, the county or other local governments, speaking the same language and understanding that we rise and we fall as a region together.
The good thing about the airport is that we are a regional asset. I’m seeing a lot of great opportunities, and the conversation is going in the right way.
Do you think a transportation sales tax could pass today?
You know, I think it would.
And I will tell you why I think it would. When we did it that (in 2018) and it passed by 57% — that’s a big margin in politics, particularly in Florida, right?
And I think the second time, when it (failed to pass in 2022), we were coming out of Covid. Everybody’s still a little shell-shocked about that.
So people want to figure out how to connect the area. That was maybe four years ago. You look at the traffic now. It’s gotten worse.
My biggest focus is making sure that we can maximize the utility for this community that we serve. And if people can’t get to us effectively, they’re going to look for other options.
Or conversely, people fly in. They love Tampa, they love the airport, but it takes them forever to get to our beautiful beaches, or it takes them forever to get to downtown. That’s not a good experience.
What is your role in spurring this regional collaboration you’re talking about?
My role as the leader of the largest, probably most impactful transportation agency in the region, is to say, look, “This is about competitiveness. This is about jobs. This is about continued economic growth.”
And I think that that message resonates across the spectrum, irrespective of party. I’ve never heard anybody on either side of the aisle that says, “Yeah, we want to lose jobs, and we want to lose our young, innovative population to other communities, because we don’t feel that there’s a need to give them transportation options.”
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