Airport parking project set for 2008 completion
Bond sales will pay for bulk of $25.9Mexpansion, upgrade

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

From staff reports
Huntsville Times

A project to build a new parking deck and toll booth and make related improvements at Huntsville International Airport is expected to be completed by June 2008.

The 1,360 new spaces in the deck, the new toll booth and building and other site work, which includes reconfiguring the old toll plaza area for rental car parking, will cost an estimated $25.9 million.

The largest share of the money for the deck project - $17.8 million - is to come from airport revenue bond sales. The Huntsville-Madison County Airport Authority on Tuesday authorized bond proceeds to help pay for the work.

The deck construction is expected to start in December and be finished Dec. 14, 2007, according to a presentation by Harry Wilson of the engineering firm Barge, Waggoner Sumner and Cannon. Wilson is the design/project manager for the parking deck project. The toll plaza and building construction is to begin next Jan. 11 and be completed April 4, 2008.

The entire project, including the site work, is to be finished in June 2008.

In other business at the airport authority's meeting, Mitch Bradley, director of the International Intermodal Center, reported that there were 3,782 rail cargo lifts in March, an increase of 51.3 percent compared with March 2005. That represents the highest lift volume for a single month in the center's history.

However, the airport's passenger traffic was down 10.8 percent in March, compared with a year earlier.