"The big Pearson airport makeover"

Tuesday, November 5, 2002

The big Pearson airport makeover
Megaproject a 'jigsaw puzzle
By OLIVER BERTIN
Canada - The Globe and Mail


MISSISSAUGA -- It's by far the biggest construction venture ever
undertaken in Canada -- a huge $4.4-billion, 10-year megaproject that
will transform Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport by the
time it is finished in 2008.

There were 1,400 construction workers inside the new terminal last week
and hundreds more outside. Over the past four years, they have poured
more than 3.6 million cubic feet of concrete, enough to build 2½ CN
Towers. They have used enough steel to erect four Eiffel Towers. And
they are less than half done.

"It's one really big jigsaw puzzle," said airport spokesman Peter Gregg,
as he pointed to a spaghetti plate of new access roads squiggling across
the landscape behind the new terminal. The joint contractors are PCL
Constructors Inc. of Edmonton and Aecon Group Inc. of Toronto.

"We're building an entirely new airport on top of the old one," he
added, referring to a project he said was the biggest ever in Canada.
"We're doing it without disrupting traffic. And we're on time and under
budget."

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority embarked on its reconstruction
project four years ago for one simple reason. The number of airline
passengers has been growing too quickly for the current airport to
possibly keep up.

Pearson's three existing terminals reached their stated capacity in
1996, and a series of stop-gap add-ons, temporary buildings and upgrades
have done little more than irritate passengers.

Few people realize just how busy Pearson has become in recent years.
Nearly 30 million people and 392,000 tonnes of cargo passed through the
airport in 2000, in 425,600 takeoffs and landings with 69 airlines. That
makes it by far the busiest airport in Canada, the seventh busiest in
North America and the 26th busiest in the world. More than half of all
the airline passengers in Canada pass through Pearson.

And it just keeps on growing. By the time it is finished in 2008, the
new Pearson will be capable of handling 50 million passengers a year, a
level the airport is expected to reach by 2020. And then, they'll have
to start building all over again.

It was clear by the late 1990s that a new airport was needed at Pearson.
By that time, it was a hodgepodge of overcrowded buildings and parking
lots that was becoming more dysfunctional by the day.

After all, Pearson's Terminal 1 -- the centrepiece of the current
airport -- was designed in the days when ocean liners still ruled the
seas, before the Boeing 707 opened up the world to frequent fliers,
their families and economy-class backpackers. And it opened 10 years
before jumbo jets arrived on the scene.

Terminal 1 will soon be torn down. Hailed as one of the most advanced
airport terminals in the world when it opened in 1964, the so-called
aeroquay was the height of convenience for travellers. To cut the
walking distance to the airplanes outside, it was built in the round
with ticket agents at the centre, aircraft around the circumference and
six floors of parking stacked above, a quick elevator ride away.

It was "an architectural marvel," Mr. Gregg said. "But it has outlived
its usefulness." But he noted that usefulness lasted nearly 40 years.

The death knell for Terminal 1 came in the 1980s, when
security-conscious officials erected barriers throughout the airport,
destroying the flow of people around the circumference, and the beauty
and functionality of the building.

The much-maligned Terminal 2 is also coming down. It is functional, but
it is in the way of expansion. Built as a cargo terminal in 1972, the
building was hardly pretty. One architecture wag described its style as
"Early Brutal," but it did have two advantages. It was as solid as the
massive poured concrete that was exposed throughout and it was designed
as an expandable tube.

Terminal 3, opened in 1991, was the most problematic for the designers
of the new airport. It is relatively new, efficient and liked by
airlines and passengers. But it just didn't fit into the grand scheme.
Eventually, the airport authority decided to expand Terminal 3
temporarily and then tear it down in the third stage of the
redevelopment scheme, after 2005.

The construction crews have been working for only four years of the
10-year building plan, but they have already transformed the look of the
airport.

Orderly chaos surrounds the airport as it approaches the end of the
first phase of construction in late 2003.

Mobile cranes and dump trucks roar as they bounce across the uneven
earth. Metal forms sit in piles ready for use on the next bridge. And
hundreds of helmeted workers scurry to and fro, bending iron rebar or
pouring concrete, carrying shovels or trowels, depending on their job.

Many buildings have already been razed -- the giant Wardair/Canadian
Airlines hangar at the south end of the airport has disappeared, and so
have the old administration building and the private terminal where
publisher Conrad Black used to keep his Gulfstream executive jet.

The workers have built two new runways, each three kilometres long and
130 centimetres deep. They have poured a new apron, 50 centimetres deep,
where the aircraft can dock. And they have almost finished the biggest,
most-modern parking lot in North America, capable of holding 12,600 cars
in eight storeys.

They've laid 27 kilometres of access roads and built 47 bridges. The
GTAA has even bought 1.5 kilometres of an expressway, Highway 409, and
spent $80-million to bring it up to its standards.

A new crop of buildings has appeared at Pearson over the past few years.
A new head office for the GTAA sits on the site of the Wardair hangar
and nearby is a new multistorey police station and fire hall.

Two new control towers arise from the airport like giant space-age grain
elevators. There is a new cargo terminal, a new maintenance shop big
enough for three jumbo jets, a concrete manufacturing plant and a
private sewage plant to make sure runoff from the runways doesn't get
into municipal sewers.

There's even a temporary airline terminal between the two north-south
runways that will be used for overflow traffic when the real chaos hits,
when Terminals 2 and 3 start to come down.

"It has more capacity than Calgary airport," Mr. Gregg said, pointing to
the terminal.

Parts of the new $3.3-billion terminal building sit squeezed between the
old terminals with new access pods that jut out. They have been squished
between the existing buildings and sliced off to fit, ready for
completion when space allows.

At four million square feet, the new terminal is so big it dwarfs all
the others. A huge semicircle, it will have glass walls along one side
to let in the light with convenient moving walkways to carry people to
and from the parking lot. There will be a shopping mall catering to 50
million high-income passengers a year.

Passengers will walk from the ticket agents in the main terminal
building through security and into a series of scallop shells, tubes and
so-called hammerheads that will take them to the waiting aircraft.

And underneath, their baggage will move along 15 kilometres of conveyor
belts from plane to arrivals lounge as fast as the passengers can walk.

But the airport won't end at the terminal door. The airport is so big
that the GTAA is building a light-rail transit system to carry
passengers from one terminal to another, and to a possible rail head
that may eventually connect to downtown Toronto 25 kilometres away.
 


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