After nearly two decades of talks, Salt Lake City International (SLC) finally got the buy-in from its airline partners to move forward with the construction of a new terminal.
Ground broke in July 2014, at the site where car rental operations will be relocated, on the first piece of the Salt Lake City Department of Airports’ $1.8 billion Terminal Redevelopment Program. The project is still going through design phases.
But the eight- to 10-year project will modernize the airport’s infrastructure, address seismic shortcomings in current facilities and generate a projected 24,000 jobs and $1 billion in wages.
Industry sources give much of the credit for securing the agreement, particularly from hub carrier Delta Air Lines, to Maureen Riley, executive director of SLC.
Riley’s ability to spearhead the agreements necessary to move forward on this project, coupled with her involvement in national and international aviation trade groups, earned her the status of ARN’s 2015 Large Airport Director of the Year.
$1.8 Billion Terminal Coming Soon
The Terminal Redevelopment Program ultimately will result in a single, modernized 700,000-square-foot terminal located southwest of the existing airport. The new facility will have fewer gates than the current half-century-old airport, but the more flexible design will allow for greater capacity well into the future. Plus, the linear concourses will be capable of expanding to meet future growth.
Riley arrived at SLC in 2007 after spending 13 years at Orlando International (MCO). She’s also been a senior consultant at Leigh Fisher Associates in San Mateo, Calif., and for Roy W. Block Consulting in Orlando. She runs SLC, as well as two reliever airports that focus heavily on general aviation and recreational flying.
She says many factors, from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, to the economic downturn, to airline bankruptcies and other external challenges, kept pushing back the terminal discussions. She declined to comment on anything that took place before she arrived but says she pushed for a collaborative approach in which Delta, the airport’s other airline partners and city officials worked together to find an agreement they could all support.
“The time was right to really solve problems,” Riley says. “SLC had an ongoing problem for many years in trying to upgrade its terminal facilities.”
She’s a big believer in building relationships and collaboration, both with major issues like building a new terminal and in week-to-week decisions that must be made by staff.
“Your success is so much influenced by the relationships you have built in your career and how you have maintained those relationships and the paths you have taken to solve problems and whether that’s been collaborative,” she says. “Building on those experiences can really be helpful when you are faced with big problems like we have here.”
The stakeholders considered two options: renovating the existing terminals or building new ones. Ultimately, the new approach was going to be about 15 percent more expensive than renovating, but stakeholders realized a refurbishment would not solve all of the facility’s issues.
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