Friday, May 4, 2007
Flying high: Oakland airport expansion takes off
By David
Goll
East Bay (CA) Business Times
After
several years of blocked-off construction sites, rerouted traffic and periodic
inconvenience, the $300 million expansion project at Oakland International
Airport is beginning to take off.
The expansion and redesign of the
airport's terminals, roads and curbside areas - including updated and
easier-to-read interior and exterior signs - has brought one of the nation's
fastest-growing air hubs into the 21st century.
The airport handled more
than 14.4 million passengers in 2006, up 3 million from five years earlier and
nearly 5 million from a decade earlier. The East Bay's large, burgeoning
business community comprises about half of Oakland International's
passengers.
Expansion will help the hub handle an estimated 18 million
passengers expected to use the airport by 2010, according to projections by the
Federal Aviation Administration, said Rosemary Barnes, an airport
spokeswoman.
People approaching the airport from 98th Avenue or
Hegenberger Road see a widened, reconfigured road network that offers a more
efficient and dramatic entry. The road and curbside improvement project is
expected to be complete by summer 2008, Barnes said. By then, four curbsides
outside Terminals 1 and 2 will accommodate passenger pickups and dropoffs,
public transportation, valet parking and airport and hotel shuttle
buses.
Most of the Terminal 2 expansion is complete, including a spacious
27,000-square-foot baggage claim area that has three huge carousels and massive
video screens that will eventually feature the productions of local
filmmakers.
The 108,000-square-foot addition - 54,000 square feet of it
for passengers - to the terminal building adds seven gates for the airport's
dominant carrier, Southwest Airlines, which accounts for more than 60 percent of
Oakland's more than 200 daily flights and 9 million of its annual
passengers.
Busy Terminal 2 looks like a cross between an airport and upscale
shopping mall, with restaurants and shopping kiosks woven around and between
airline gates. In dramatic contrast to the spacious but dark older terminal gate
areas, the wing's ample picture windows let in generous amounts of natural light
that complements pastel paint shades on the walls and bright terrazzo-tile
floors.
Where Oakland passengers once had limited dining choices, they
now can choose from an array of local, regional and national possibilities,
including Starbucks Coffee, California Pizza Kitchen, Max's Eatz and Fresh
Bakery, Fenton's Creamery, Auntie Anne's Pretzels and a sitdown Andale Mexican
Restaurant that also features a full-service bar, food to go and a small Peet's
Coffee stand. A Gordon Biersch restaurant is scheduled to open next
week.
Amidst the busy eateries, Bayfront News has an expansive newsstand
and bookstore. A few steps away, the Oakland Marketplace area contains tall,
handsome kiosks selling everything from expensive sunglasses to a variety of
Scharffen Berger chocolate products, A.G. Ferrari's imported Italian specialty
food items, and toys, apparel and other souvenir items from the Oakland Zoo and
Children's Fairyland.
The airport's dramatic expansion of food and retail
offerings precede a change in management of these operations a year from now,
when HMSHost Corp., formerly Host International Inc., of Bethesda, Md., takes
over all operations from current concessioner Delaware North Cos. Last year,
HMSHost was awarded a $120 million contract by the Port of Oakland, which
oversees the airport, to provide concessions on an interim basis for two years,
and on a full-time basis for 10 years beginning June 1, 2008.
The company
predicts that its businesses will generate 350 jobs, $900 million in gross
receipts and $117 million in rent to the airport between 2006 and
2018.
In a wide corridor connecting the old and new sections of Terminal
2, a 200-foot-long, two-lane moving sidewalk shares space with the airport's
striking and most noteworthy example of its expanded public art program -"Going
Away, Going Home," a creation of Oakland artist Hung Liu. The piece, which Liu
created in Germany, contains 64 individually painted panes of glass that feature
red-crowned cranes against a background of satellite images of the Bay Area,
Northern California and the Asian-Pacific region.
Barnes said 1 percent
of expansion funds were set aside for public art projects.
The
long-awaited expansion and improvements at the airport are crucial to the
region's business development, said Bruce Kern, executive director of the East
Bay Economic Development Alliance in Oakland.
"For any business looking
to relocate in any major metropolitan area, the efficiency of the airport is
extremely important," he said, adding that his business advocacy organization
regularly gets inquiries about Oakland International from companies interested
in the East Bay.
"It's great to see investments being made in the
airport, making it more efficient for carriers, for passengers and air cargo
activity," he said. "They are now moving toward fully maximizing the
airport."
Kern said, for example, that one of the East Bay's most
important economic drivers, the biosciences industry, depends on the air cargo
operation for safe delivery of "high-end products."
Features that now
appear in new and redesigned areas of the airport reflect changes that have
occurred in the industry since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the East
Coast, according to Kern, putting the facility itself in a better position to
grow.
"In the airport's new areas, the services and conveniences are
located (behind security checkpoints), which is attentive to the needs of
passengers who are spending more time these days waiting at airports," Kern
said.
Another consumer advantage, according to Barnes, is the addition of
WiFi, also known as wireless fidelity, capability throughout the
airport.
When tarmac improvements and the remodeling of older portions of
Terminal 2 are complete, Barnes said the airport will have its full complement
of 29 gates. At that point, remodeling on Terminal 1 - which houses the
airport's 11 other carriers as well as two gates for Southwest - may be ready to
begin. Barnes said that work may be finished in another two or three
years.