Paul Campbell Jr. does double duty in South Carolina. The executive director and CEO of the Charleston County Aviation Authority for the past two years, Campbell also represents South Carolina Senate District 44 located in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties.
Campbell is relatively new to the field of airport management. The legislator joined the aviation authority in August 2013 after then-director Sue Stevens resigned. Formerly, Campbell was an executive with Alcoa Primary Metals.
During Campbell’s short tenure at Charleston International (CHS), the airport has shown solid gains in passenger traffic. Preparing for strong growth, CHS embarked on its Terminal Redevelopment & Improvement Program in December 2012 with a terminal airport expansion, followed by a new rental car pavilion completed in March 2014. Terminal renovations and expansion, including security screening checkpoint changes, a baggage-claim expansion, a renovation of the Central Hall and Ticketing Hall, expansion of Concourse B and renovation of Concourse A all began in 2013 and 2014, and they are expected to be completed later this year or early in 2016.
ARN’s Carol Ward spoke with Campbell about all the latest changes at CHS and his goals for the airport.
Ward: I know Charleston International set a passenger record in 2014. What is happening so far in 2015?
Campbell: This past year, we had 3.13 million passengers. That’s up over 50 percent since 2010. Year to date, we’re up almost 8 percent, so it’s not slowing down any. That speaks well for this area. Tourism is alive and well, business is growing. We’re expanding the number of flights coming into the airport, so we’ve got to have a bigger terminal for that. Even with existing flights, many of the airlines have moved to larger planes so they are carrying more passengers. We have 70 to 80 flights a day now, depending on the season. We go to 23 different airports and 18 different cities. We’re not going to quit with the great airlines we have. We’re going to continue to try to develop new routes with the current airlines and we’ll be looking at additional airlines.
Ward: Can you give me an overview and status update for the TRIP?
Campbell: Most people say, if you build it they will come. We say, we’ve got to build it because they are coming. We’d better be ready for them. We’re spending about $189 million to try to renovate the airport. Very little work has been done to the terminal since the airport was built in the 1980s. We’re expanding the gates by 50 percent, going from 10 gates to 15 gates. We’re putting in 15 new jet bridges. Since this airport was constructed before 9/11, the [Transportation Security Administration] checkpoints had to be shoehorned into the walkways. Now we have a consolidated checkpoint where we have six lanes to check passengers through, and we can expand it to eight if we need it. We didn’t have a lot of the amenities that you need today. We’re modernizing everything that goes into the airport. We have a new rental car pavilion. We’re adding 50 percent more baggage carousels for incoming baggage. The terminal itself has grown by about 33 percent – we were 330,000 square feet and now we’re 430,000 square feet.
Read the rest of the interview in ARN’s August issue. Click here to subscribe.
