Airport renovations nearing completion

Lounging accommodations in the upstairs gate area. The ceiling was inspired by building colors on Elk Avenue.

The Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport is reaching the final phases of renovation, held up only by a “punch list” of items and last projects. The year-and-a-half long construction effort has revitalized the building and restructured the use of the space to improve passenger flow and experience, said Airport Manager Rick Lamport.

“A better experience both in and out, that’s the main thing,” he said.

A need for change 

The seed for the terminal renovation was planted in 2015 with the completion of an airport master plan, which laid out decades of the airport’s goals. The plan identified passenger experience and building age as primary areas of concern. 

The building, constructed in the late 1970s, was in need of upgrades. The 40-year-old heating and ventilation system presented significant repair challenges. The airline ground equipment, including diesel-powered baggage tugs, were stored in the west end of the terminal building and when left idling on brutally cold winter mornings, would fill the air with fumes. Second-hand jet bridges also needed replacing.

To improve the passenger experience, the goal of the renovation was to reuse available space more than expand it, Lamport said. 

“The general conditions for passenger services were totally outdated and inadequate,” Lamport said. “We needed to improve the usable space, because the enplanements were growing, and we were getting congested.” 

The renovation was also spurred by the airport’s high degree of passenger “leakage.” That term refers to the percentage of potential passengers who live in a “catchment area” — in this case, about 17,048 people in Gunnison county — who end up choosing to use an airport outside of that catchment area, like those in Montrose or Grand Junction. 

“Our leakage was originally 77% and is now 73%, which means that [more than] 70% of passengers in our catchment area are leaking and using other airports,” Lamport said.

A goal of the terminal renovation was to reduce leakage by improving the passenger experience. 

“It’s not about increasing more people to the valley, it’s about capturing leakage which makes our airport more profitable,” he said.

A budget upended 

A terminal and area study that laid out basic plans for the renovation was completed in 2019. The area study identified three alternatives for the renovation: low-, mid- and high-end. The low-cost was around $12 million, and the high-end was around $29 million. The team originally planned on pursuing the low-cost option, but pandemic-era subsidies more than doubled the available funding. 

A project that was originally slated to be a 10-year, three-phase effort turned into a single-phase project with an influx of $14 million in CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act money last spring. 

“That was a game changer, I was stunned for like an hour as I was counting all the zeros,” Lamport said. 

“We got a call from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and they knew what our full scope of the project was over three phases, and they had additional funding for us, and they asked if we could accelerate the scope. We said yes, because we were as shovel ready as you could get,” Assistant County Manager for Operations and Sustainability John Cattles said. “So it changed everything. We were able to roll everything into one phase of work.” 

The CARES money permitted the inclusion of capital projects and “customer-facing” elements, something that regular FAA funding does not typically cover.

“It really was an unusual occurrence that, as challenging as COVID was, it did open up a funding opportunity, and the FAA allowed the funding to be used in a broader array of projects than they usually do,” said County Manager Matthew Birnie. 

When all was said and done, the operating budget soared to $29 million. The $14 million from CARES was supplemented by over $10 million from the FAA’s Airport Improvement Project and Discretionary funds, with kick-ins from the federal infrastructure grant, Colorado Department of Transportation and the county. 

With the influx of money, construction started at the end of winter 2021, just after ski season ended.

Upgrades abound

After a year and half of construction, there are now new jet bridges and bag belts, installed fiber optics and a new heating and ventilation system. The terminal has an escalator, the first in the county. The airport now employs a common-use terminal system, meaning any airline can use any gate system, rather than one airline being tied to a specific gate.

The renovation was designed by Gensler, an international architecture firm specializing in airport terminals, and built by Rocky-Mountain-based Shaw Construction. 

A modern, tighter building envelope that aims for net-zero energy production underpins the renovation. It’s also a storybook chapter of the renovation, Cattles said, considering the original airport was also built with energy efficiency in mind, including a passive solar heating mechanism that was fairly innovative back in the early eighties.

“Here we are now that we’ve renovated the building, and we’ve continued to focus on energy efficiency,” he said. “It's something the airport has been about for a long time and we’re building on that legacy.”

The building envelope has new insulation, ground source (or geothermal) heating and an advanced control system that allows the building to “react” to occupant load. Carbon dioxide sensors in the building use the compound as a proxy for human occupancy, and automatically adjusts the ventilation to the number of people in the room.   

Onyx, a privately-owned solar company, owns the new solar array in the parking lot and is in a 20-year power purchase contract with the city. The county provided the site and built the structures the array sits on, and Western Colorado University contributed funds to the array as well. The deal reached between the three parties — city, county and Western — divides the energy produced in thirds. The county puts their share towards the airport.  

There are artistic traces of the community throughout the building, from a wooden topographic map of the valley by Denver-based artist Dan Sjogren to exterior murals by muralist Jeremy Collins. The new security queuing area will have display art from Crested Butte-based illustrator John Fellows. 

With just a few “punch list” items left, the end is around the corner. The airport will hold a celebration on Dec. 9, time to be announced.

(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or abby@gunnisontimes.com.)