Airport master plan looks at demand way down the road

By Brice Wallace 

The second phase of the Salt Lake City International Airport’s $4.1 billion facelift is still two to three years from completion, but airport officials are looking further ahead to envision what’s next for the facility.

As in, two to three decades.

The Salt Lake City Department of Airports (SLCDA), along with consulting firm RS&H, recently held a final public presentation of the master plan for the airport. The plan has been three years in the making, and finishing touches will complete the vision for the airport to meet future air transportation demand in the long term.

“This really is the only big international airport that Utah is going to have, so it’s important that we find ways to get it right, and that’s really what this master plan is all about,” Bill Wyatt, executive director of the department, told the in-person and online audience at the event.

Among the changes that could be in store are lengthening a runway, moving some operational spaces to different parts of the airport property, and building a third concourse north of the current two.

Brady Fredrickson, director of planning at the airport, said the plan is “a roadmap for how we can keep this airport running as efficiently in 30 to 40 years as it does today.” The current changes at the airport were first envisioned in a 1996 master plan, and the new plan “feeds off that,” he said.

“Because we followed that master plan’s vision, we became not just a regional airport serving a regional economy. We’re now a global airport serving a global economy very efficiently,” Fredrickson said.

The first phase of the “New SLC” opened last fall and involved reworking the central terminal, the west ends of concourses A and B, the parking garage, roads, tunnels, parking and more. Phase 2 is underway and expected to be finished in 2024 and includes building the eastern ends of both concourses, building a central tunnel to connect the concourses, and demolishing buildings no longer in use.

The $4.1 billion, 4 million-square-foot project is the state’s largest public works project ever and is expected to have a $5.5 billion economic impact.

But those changes will not meet the challenges the airport will face in the future, officials say. The number of passengers is expected to grow from 24 million, a figure from when the master plan work first began in 2018, to 38 million two decades from now. Aircraft operations are expected to rise from 325,000 to 435,000 during that time, and the amount of cargo moving through the airport is projected to increase from 383 million pounds to 602 million pounds. All the while, the airport also must keep up with constantly changing FAA standards.

A study of the airport revealed a need for longer runways, more gates, more terminal roadways, more parking and rental car spaces, more space for air cargo because of a boost in e-commerce shipments and better placements of support areas (storage, maintenance and fuel). Among the ideas not included in the master plan are building a fourth concourse and relocating the interstate highway.

“So what the master plan does is it gives us a vision, an idea of what we should be doing for the future,” said Steve Domino, project director for RS&H. “The goal is to preserve land in the right areas so that when we need to build a facility, the land is there so that we can do it.”

The possible cost of the changes did not come up during the meeting, and Domino said most of the development will takes place in years 11-20. The next steps of the process are undertaking an environmental assessment and presenting the plan to the Salt Lake City Council. Meanwhile, master plans for the South Valley and Tooele Valley regional airports will be developed.

Wyatt acknowledged that while “people in Salt Lake understandably got used to an incredibly convenient operation here” in the past, a larger airport may mean longer times to get through the airport processes in the future.

But he also spoke about many advantages the changes could bring. A hint of things to come is a new international service announcement, with Lufthansa Group beginning nonstop flights to and from Germany next spring.

“And I can tell you, we’re going to have more, because we now will have the room to accommodate more airlines,” Wyatt said. “That means more competition on prices — which I think is a good thing — and a more efficient and more environmentally friendly airport.”