The Mobile Airport Authority is moving ahead with construction plans for a new commercial terminal at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley, with officials still targeting a spring 2019 opening for the low-cost carrier facility.
Authority President Chris Curry said the board of directors recently authorized construction activity tied to the renovation of an existing building at Brookley that will be converted into the airport’s first commercial terminal. The move follows months of planning work that began with the hiring of Birmingham-based architectural firm KPS Group to guide the authority through the selection of a construction team.
“When we started this, we hired KPS to move us through the process to select a construction manager,” Curry said.
Through a competitive request-for-proposals process, the authority selected Jesco Construction Co. to serve as construction manager for the project, with Michael Baker International brought on as the engineering firm overseeing the terminal’s design and build-out.
The building slated for conversion is a roughly 50,000-square-foot structure that has served as a logistics facility for Airbus, which currently uses it as a foreign trade zone as part of its nearby aircraft manufacturing operations. Curry said the airport authority will continue sharing space with Airbus for several more months before taking full control.
“We’re going to share it with Airbus for another six months,” Curry said. “Then we’ll take over the building.”
Once renovated, the facility will be designated Terminal 1 and will primarily serve low-cost carriers while the authority works through a broader master planning process for the Brookley site. Officials expect the terminal to open by April 30, 2019, at a total renovation cost of about $3.2 million.
Curry said Via Airlines is expected to be the first commercial carrier to operate out of the new terminal once it opens. The airline currently flies out of Mobile Regional Airport, offering four flights a week between Mobile and Orlando-Sanford on 50-seat Embraer regional jets.
“Via has expressed a desire to move to the terminal as soon as it’s open,” Curry said. “We continue to talk to other carriers that don’t have service out of Mobile today.”
Beyond the immediate terminal project, the authority is also soliciting bids for a broader master plan governing future development at Brookley. Curry said officials expect to narrow the field of firms competing for that contract by the end of the year, with the planning process itself expected to take a year to a year and a half to complete.
Looking further ahead, Curry said that once low-cost carriers are established at the new terminal, the authority may pursue construction of a second terminal designed to accommodate larger, more traditional carriers as commercial service at Brookley grows.
The push to shift commercial air service to Brookley follows a study released earlier this year that found relocating flights from Mobile Regional Airport to the downtown Brookley site was feasible and, in several respects, advantageous. The Mobile Metropolitan Airport System Study concluded it would be more cost-effective to consolidate commercial service at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley than to fund the infrastructure upgrades that would be needed to expand capacity at Bates Field in west Mobile.
The study also cited Brookley’s location as a competitive advantage, noting the site is “geographically better positioned to attract additional air service due to its proximity to downtown and ability to attract a larger share of the airport’s catchment area.”
Currently, Mobile’s airport captures only about half of its potential regional travelers, with many area residents instead driving to airports in Pensacola or Gulfport for flights. Study authors suggested that a move to a more centrally located, downtown facility could help the region capture a share of the roughly 138,000 additional potential passengers currently flying out of neighboring markets.